DOJ ramps up noncitizen voting prosecutions

The Trump administration is ramping up criminal prosecutions of noncitizens accused of voting in U.S. elections, bringing charges against about 20 people this month under a decades-old law criminalizing “voting by aliens,” roughly 13% of all prosecutions brought under the statute since it was enacted three decades ago, according to a Reuters review of court records and government statements.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the cases undercut critics who argue noncitizen voting doesn’t happen. “When you have dozens of cases that we brought just in the last few weeks, I think that discourages and defeats their characterization,” he told reporters Sept. 22, according to Reuters. 

Critics, including Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, say the administration’s rhetoric is “little by little eroding the trust of the public” in elections, even as studies show noncitizen voting remains rare in the context of the millions of votes cast in national elections. 

Homeland Security Investigations, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) criminal investigative arm, has mobilized hundreds of agents in all 50 states and has 1,600 open investigations related to the issue, according to Reuters. A Department of Justice (DOJ) official described the effort as a “tier-one priority for the attorney general and for the White House,” and said the pace of prosecutions would likely increase ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. 

Reuters also reported that a DOJ official told senior federal prosecutors this month that they could no longer decline election fraud cases on their own, with the deputy attorney general’s office reserving final say when FBI or DHS agents believe charges are warranted, a shift from the traditional practice of career prosecutors making that call.

The DOJ has brought charges against 32 people in the past four weeks for noncitizen voting and related offenses. In Pennsylvania, federal prosecutors charged four noncitizens, including two lawful permanent residents, with voting illegally in elections dating back to 2022. “Our sovereignty as a nation belongs to the American people and no one else,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said.

In Florida, Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was recently endorsed by CatholicVote, announced charges against 20 defendants, including 16 noncitizens accused of falsely claiming citizenship to register and vote. “Florida will not allow anyone to steal the vote of Americans at the ballot box,” Uthmeier said. 

And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office assisted federal prosecutors in charging seven people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Nigeria, and Mexico, which Paxton announced while campaigning for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. “Foreign influence has no place in American elections,” Paxton stated.

The recent cases broadly follow the pattern of lawful permanent residents saying they are citizens, and in some cases, casting ballots. A separate Reuters review found states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors in driver’s license and state ID applications.

Commenting on the issue for Zeale News, Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies said, “No American voters ever should have their lawful ballot cancelled out by ineligible voters, whether from the next county or from another country.”