WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is dramatically expanding its search for noncitizen voter fraud ahead of the November midterms, assigning hundreds of federal investigators and attorneys to a problem that repeated studies and state reviews have found occurs only rarely.
Homeland Security Investigations says it now has about 1,600 open voter-fraud cases and has made 160 arrests. The Justice Department says 24 immigrants have been charged this year, with officials promising prosecutions will increase before Election Day. Axios reported that agents normally assigned to smuggling, trafficking, financial fraud and sexual exploitation have been redirected to the effort.
The scale of the operation stands in sharp contrast to the available evidence. Reuters reviewed state and independent investigations and found noncitizen voting to be exceedingly uncommon. One Brennan Center review identified just 30 suspected cases among 23.5 million ballots, while the conservative Heritage Foundation documented 24 cases over two decades.
AP has likewise reported that noncitizen voting is illegal under federal law and rarely occurs, with state audits repeatedly finding only isolated cases.
Even some recent registration problems cited by officials involved software or administrative errors rather than deliberate illegal voting. Despite that record, the administration is treating the issue as a “tier one priority,” continuing Trump’s years-long claims that noncitizen voting represents a major threat to U.S. elections.
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