Elon Musk, owner of X, has also helped the conspiracy theory go viral. In July, he wrote on X that the “goal of the Democratic Party from the beginning has been to import as many illegal voters as possible.” Trump even repeated the claim last week during the presidential debate. “Our elections are bad,” Trump said. “And they’re trying to get a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in to vote.”
Now, as Trump’s acolytes spread this lie on a hyperlocal level, pundits are concerned about the danger it poses to voters and non-voters alike.
“These efforts can lead to intimidation, such as when activists from the Election Integrity Network show up at polling places and question the eligibility of non-English speaking or non-white voters,” Fischer says.
Many of the volunteers who participated in the calls organized by the Election Integrity Network also repeated rumors and conspiracies, some relating to claims that pro-Democratic NGOs were registering immigrants across the country.
“I would also like to see something like Spanish-language TV ads or billboards that specifically warn that if you are a non-citizen and you vote, that is a felony and you will be subject to immediate deportation, something like that, very clearly stated,” said an attendee named Pat at a meeting. She added that the message should be aimed directly at Spanish-speaking communities, which would result in “a lot of people saying, ‘I’m not going to the polls.’”
In some cases, speakers voiced entirely new conspiracy theories. A woman named Patty King of Tennessee, on a call on August 22, claimed that they had “identified illegal immigrants who had registered through homeless shelters. I have over 564 of them,” adding: “Proving that and then proving that they voted is another big problem.”
Several callers identified themselves as election officials, poll workers and representatives of their local Republican Party.
One of the attendees on a recent call was Deanna De’Liberto, who was Recently appointed by her local Republican Party as a presidential elector for North Carolina’s District 5. De’Liberto raised a conspiracy about Immigrants distort electoral maps in favor of the Democrats.
The meetings have also featured several prominent guest speakers, including Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. The Heritage Foundation, the ultraconservative group behind the dystopian Project 2025 plan, has been at the forefront of promoting the lie that noncitizens are voting in large numbers. The group has also released a series of “explosive” undercover videos claiming to show how noncitizens can obtain fake documents; a recent New York Times Investigation denied the claims made in several of those videos.
“(The Biden administration) is mobilizing this massive government-funded operation targeting its preferred demographics, which obviously includes illegal immigrants, without providing any evidence to support this claim.
And last week, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and the lead sponsor of the SAVE Act in the House, spoke at the weekly meeting, taking questions from attendees and urging everyone to keep pushing the conspiracy theory. Days earlier, Mitchell had appeared at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee chaired by Roy on Capitol Hill, discussing the same topic.