The short version
- Federal agencies report approximately 160 arrests and 70 formal charges related to noncitizen voting since early 2025, a fraction of the millions of registered voters in the United States.
- Election law experts and former officials state these low numbers reinforce long-standing evidence that noncitizen voting is extremely rare and that state systems effectively prevent such occurrences.
- The administration’s efforts have faced legal challenges, including court blocks on federal voter databases and whistleblower allegations regarding improper investigative methods by immigration staff.
Six weeks before the midterm elections, federal authorities provided a detailed accounting of their ongoing campaign to identify and prosecute noncitizens who may have illegally voted in recent elections. During a joint press briefing involving the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Postal Service, officials revealed that their whole-of-government effort has resulted in approximately 1,600 identified cases of voter fraud. Of these instances, roughly 160 individuals have been arrested. These figures offer a rare public update on an initiative that has redirected significant federal resources and hundreds of employees toward election security at the direction of President Donald Trump.
The numbers released by Homeland Security Investigations senior official Matthew Millhollin stand in stark contrast to previous assertions by the president and his administration regarding the scale of noncitizen voting. While earlier claims suggested that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were on state voter rolls, the current data represents a minuscule fraction of the nation’s more than 211 million active registered voters. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter added that the Justice Department has formally charged 70 people since the beginning of the administration with unlawful voting and registration offenses. However, officials clarified that many of the arrests originated from voter fraud leads but resulted in charges for related offenses, such as false claims to citizenship or making false statements, rather than violations of voting statutes themselves.
Election law experts and former government officials argue that these statistics do not indicate a hidden crisis but rather confirm what has been established through years of research: noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare. David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who now leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, stated that the administration appears to be manufacturing evidence of widespread fraud, only to produce incredibly small numbers even when those figures are overstated. He emphasized that state election systems have performed an extraordinarily effective job of keeping noncitizens off voter lists, a fact that has been proven repeatedly despite political rhetoric suggesting otherwise.
The federal push to crack down on noncitizen voting has intensified as the administration seeks to influence the outcome of the upcoming midterms, which will determine control of Congress for the final two years of Trump’s term. The president has signed two executive orders aimed at addressing the issue, both of which are currently entangled in legal challenges. Additionally, he has pressured states to utilize a controversial federal voter database that a federal judge blocked due to privacy violations. Legislative efforts to pass a documentary proof of citizenship bill have also stalled, prompting the administration to pursue alternative enforcement strategies.
In August, the Department of Homeland Security ordered a group of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff to shift their focus entirely to manual investigations of state voter rolls. According to a federal whistleblower report, this directive instructed employees to misrepresent themselves when using state voter lookup tools, a practice that could violate state laws. The whistleblower further warned that the initiative relies on unreliable data, raising concerns that U.S. citizens might be wrongly implicated in federal documentation errors. This manual pivot occurred after the administration failed to secure detailed data from all states through other means.
State-level investigations have mirrored the federal findings of low incidence rates. In Texas, election officials examined registered voters flagged as noncitizens by the now-blocked federal database before a judge halted its use. Out of 2,724 individuals flagged in the state, only 117 cases were referred to the attorney general’s office for further investigation. By mid-September, seven people in Texas faced charges for illegally voting in federal elections or falsely claiming citizenship. Given that Texas has approximately 18 million registered voters, these figures underscore the limited scope of actual violations compared to the size of the electorate.
Critics of the administration’s approach argue that the focus on noncitizen voting distracts from more substantive election integrity issues and relies on fear rather than fact. Becker noted that while no system is perfect, he is unaware of any single election whose outcome was altered by noncitizen voting. The consistent pattern across various investigations suggests that when potential instances are scrutinized, the real numbers remain consistently small. This reality challenges the narrative of rampant fraud that has been used to justify extensive federal intervention in state-run elections.
As Election Day approaches, the tension between federal enforcement efforts and state election administration continues to grow. The Justice Department’s charges and Homeland Security’s arrests represent only a fraction of the broader political battle over election rules and oversight. Legal challenges to executive orders and database usage are likely to persist, while questions remain about the efficacy and legality of manual investigation methods employed by immigration staff. The coming weeks will test whether these federal actions can withstand judicial scrutiny or if they will be viewed as politically motivated overreach with little impact on actual electoral integrity.
The disparity between the administration’s rhetoric and the documented results highlights a growing divide in how election security is perceived versus how it operates in practice. While officials argue that even a small number of fraud cases warrants aggressive action, experts maintain that the resources devoted to hunting noncitizen voters could be better applied elsewhere. The upcoming midterms will serve as a critical juncture for assessing the impact of these policies, both on voter confidence and on the administrative burden placed on state election officials who must navigate federal pressure while maintaining accurate voter rolls.
Sources behind this briefing
Go to the original reporting
- PBS NewsHour↗Trump's focus on noncitizen voting has led to 160 arrests. That shows it's rare, experts say
