The Department of Homeland Security has mounted an extraordinary campaign to hunt for illegal voters, devoting hundreds of federal agents to the task of poring over tens of thousands of voter records and knocking on the doors of people suspected of being noncitizens who unlawfully cast ballots.
But the crusade has so far resulted in the Trump administration’s charging only about 236 people with voting-fraud-related offenses across the country since the president took office, according to the Justice Department. That includes some noncitizens accused of registering to vote but not actually casting ballots.
The figure is a minuscule share of the more than 158 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election, and falls far short of the figures cited in July by Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, who claimed without evidence that more than 250,000 potential noncitizens were registered to vote in just four states alone.
The small number of charges has further undermined President Trump’s specious claims that voting by noncitizens is pervasive and tilting elections for Democrats, and raises questions about why the Homeland Security Department has dedicated vast resources to the effort ahead of the midterm election.
“This is about delegitimizing an election that they’re very worried about,” said David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works to support election officials. “They’re trying to manufacture evidence and they’re failing.”
The administration’s campaign to scrutinize noncitizen voters has involved a close partnership between the Homeland Security Department and the Justice Department, which has led efforts to criminally charge noncitizens with illegal voting. The Homeland Security Department’s investigatory work has also been core to recent attempts by the Justice Department to intervene in the election.
The Homeland Security Department has defended its focus on the issue, saying that it would root out election fraud wherever it could be found and ramp up deportations of noncitizens who illegally voted or registered.
“D.H.S. is committed to ensuring fair, honest and accurate elections,” the department said in a statement. “D.H.S. is upholding the rule of law and protecting the integrity of American elections by removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders.”
Voting by noncitizens, who are barred by law from registering to vote or casting ballots, is exceptionally rare, according to multiple studies. Critics have said the Homeland Security Department’s aggressive efforts to investigate noncitizen voters instead appear to be aimed at intimidating voters and laying the groundwork to challenge the election results.
Immigration advocacy groups have also expressed fears for months that federal agents could turn up at polling places, though as of Tuesday morning, there were no signs of immigration authorities patrolling voting sites.
Tasking hundreds of officers with scouring state voter rolls and deploying agents to interview people at their homes to root out noncitizen voters is a remarkable use of the Homeland Security Department’s powers. The largest federal law enforcement agency, the department was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to help protect the country from threats.
The Trump administration has leveraged at least four of its nine main agencies to promote investigations into noncitizen voters. That includes agencies that typically focus on deportations, border management, disaster relief, and immigration applications.
Federal agents who specialize in investigating national security threats and immigration benefit fraud have been diverted to finding noncitizens on the voter rolls. Homeland security agents who usually investigate crimes like child exploitation and illegal trade have also investigated more than 150 organizations that they say may be helping noncitizens illegally register to vote.
But the department’s efforts have so far resulted in a small number of charges and little evidence that voter fraud is rampant. The bulk of the 236 charges have been made in the last nine weeks alone, according to the Justice Department, a sign that the administration has dramatically ramped up prosecutions ahead of the midterms. The proportion actually convicted of an offense could end up even smaller.
Investigations into noncitizen voters have historically followed a pattern. State or federal election officials first report that hundreds or thousands of noncitizens may be on the voter rolls. But the figures often shrink to dozens after further investigation. Each inquiry ends with few, if any, prosecutions.
“The massive amount of resources that have been devoted to this operation have uncovered only tiny numbers of individuals who may have voted or registered to vote,” said Wendy R. Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s just reinforcing what is known and actually raises questions as to what is the purpose of this operation.”
Some of the Trump administration’s claims of large numbers of noncitizens on the voter rolls in certain states have also unraveled. After homeland security officials claimed that nearly 16,000 people might be noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada, they sent to the state a list of 185 names that had “gone through a rigorous manual review process.” State officials later determined that all 185 were citizens.
Some of the Homeland Security Department’s efforts have faced legal setbacks. Last month, a federal judge in California restricted the department from carrying out field interviews in nine states as part of an effort to investigate noncitizen voters. In September, a federal judge ruled that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which leads the federal response to disasters, could not withhold emergency preparedness grants from states that refuse to make changes to their election processes, including verifying voters’ citizenship.
But that has not deterred the department from pressing ahead with other investigations.
In late October, a group of officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — an agency within the Homeland Security Department — were directed to review about 15,000 cases of people suspected of illegally registering to vote in California, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The directive is a continuation of an earlier nationwide effort by the agency to examine voter records and federal databases to generate leads for ICE agents to further investigate potential cases of noncitizen voters. The agency’s investigation led immigration officers to identify more than 20,000 people the agency claimed illegally registered to vote in California, according to court documents.
The new effort underscores the Trump administration’s fixation on California, which the Justice Department recently sued to try to force the state to set aside ballots from the 20,000 people the administration suspects are “likely noncitizens.” In a court filing, data scientists analyzing that list of voters said they found that more than 40 percent of the people on the list do not appear on California’s voter rolls. The analysis also found that the list included thousands of people who appear to be citizens.
After a federal judge rejected the effort, the administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to require that California set aside the ballots. The court rejected the request just hours later.
In an October email reviewed by The Times, Paul Gleason, a homeland security official, told officials involved with the new effort that officers would be examining registered voters in California “with no evidence of actual voting.” It is illegal for noncitizens to falsely certify that they are citizens when registering to vote, even if they never ultimately cast a ballot. Some immigrants, though, have said that they inadvertently registered while obtaining or renewing driver’s licenses, pointing to voter laws that have made it easier for people to register to vote at motor vehicle agencies.
In a September email reviewed by the Times, Mr. Gleason said that immigration officers had already reviewed more than 150,000 cases and made over 66,000 referrals to ICE for further investigation as part of the nationwide effort to find noncitizen voters. Several former homeland security officials said in interviews that the number of referrals amounted to a massive workload for ICE agents tasked with following up on the leads.
Proponents of the administration praised it for investigating a problem they believe deserves more scrutiny. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, an acting deputy homeland security secretary during the first Trump administration, said he thought it was clearly appropriate for homeland security agents to investigate noncitizen voting and help secure elections.
“I realize that the extent or scope of the problem itself is debated,” Mr. Cuccinelli said in a recent interview. “But what can’t be debated is that the issue exists.”
But some former homeland security officials questioned why the department has devoted ample resources to the effort and tasked federal agents with investigating the rare issue of noncitizen voting.
“Should you be pulling special agents and federal criminal investigators off national security issues to focus on that? When I weigh out public safety threats, the answer is absolutely not,” said Eric Balliet, who worked at Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigations arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for more than 20 years.
Glenn Thrush, Amy Schoenfeld Walker and Seamus Hughes contributed reporting.
The post Trump Effort to Prove Rampant Noncitizen Voting Leads to Few Charges So Far appeared first on New York Times.
