WASHINGTON, D.C. — Millhollin stated that the 1,600 voter fraud cases have led to 160 arrests. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the Department of Justice had charged 70 people since the start of the administration with unlawful voting and registration offenses.

Neither Matthew Millhollin nor Trent McCotter clarified exactly what charges their data included or whether the datasets overlapped. President Donald Trump signed two election-related executive orders designed in part to address noncitizen voting. Both election-related executive orders are tied up in legal challenges.

A federal judge blocked the use of a federal voter database for violating Americans’ privacy. The Department of Homeland Security ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff in August to shift to a full-time manual investigation of state voter rolls, according to a federal whistleblower’s report. A federal whistleblower reported that the Department of Homeland Security initiative directs federal employees to misrepresent themselves on state voter lookup tools in a way that could violate state laws.

A federal whistleblower warned that the Department of Homeland Security initiative leans on unreliable data that could wrongly implicate U.S. citizens in federal documentation. State election officials in Texas investigated 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as noncitizens on their voter rolls by the federal voter database. Texas election officials referred 117 cases to the Texas attorney general’s office for investigation.

Seven people in Texas were charged in mid-September with illegally voting in federal elections or falsely claiming citizenship. Texas has about 18 million registered voters. The United States has more than 211 million active registered voters.

"They have tried to manufacture evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and every time they do, their numbers are incredibly small, even when they’re overstated," said David Becker, Executive Director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. "They confirm what we’ve known for years, which is that states have been doing an extraordinarily good job of keeping noncitizens off their voter lists," he said.

Becker stated he was not aware of a single election whose outcome was altered by noncitizens voting. "No system is perfect," he said. "The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election," said Trent McCotter. "But the actions of even one malicious actor on the ground can fatally undercut that security," McCotter said.

Why It Matters

The scale of the enforcement effort intersects with a national electorate of more than 211 million active registered voters. The initiative involves multiple federal agencies, including Homeland Security Investigations, the Justice Department, and the Postal Service, while also drawing scrutiny from whistleblowers regarding data reliability and operational methods.

Legal challenges to executive orders and court rulings blocking specific database uses highlight ongoing tensions between federal enforcement priorities and privacy protections. State-level investigations, such as those in Texas, demonstrate how federal flags translate into local prosecutorial decisions, with outcomes varying from mass investigations to a smaller number of criminal charges.

What's New

Homeland Security Investigations, a subagency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, reported that the Trump administration's voter fraud initiative has led to about 1,600 cases and 160 arrests, according to a joint press briefing with the Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service. The Department of Justice announced charges against 16 individuals in connection with illegal voting, illegal voter registration, and related election-fraud schemes across the country, including 8 aliens residing in Texas facing charges for alleged unlawful voting.