According to a Reuters review of court records, the Justice Department has charged about 20 individuals this month under the federal statute that criminalizes voting by non‑citizens, representing roughly 13% of all prosecutions under the law since it was enacted three decades ago.
The Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, has deployed hundreds of agents in every state, describing the effort as a “tier‑one priority for the attorney general and for the White House,” said an anonymous Justice Department official familiar with the operation.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told reporters that the recent wave of cases counters critics who claim the issue never arises, noting that “dozens of cases we brought just in the last few weeks” demonstrate the problem’s reality.
The surge comes as President Donald Trump and his allies continue to press claims of widespread election fraud and urge Congress to tighten voting requirements, while Democrats and election‑integrity experts argue that non‑citizen voting is rare and that the rhetoric erodes public trust.
A July Reuters review found that before Trump’s second term, federal prosecutions for alleged non‑citizen voting were extremely uncommon, and most defendants were lawful permanent residents – a pattern that persists in the latest cases.
Separate reporting indicates that software glitches and clerical errors have added more than 30,000 self‑declared non‑citizens to voter rolls nationwide since 2000, underscoring the complexity of the issue beyond criminal intent.
Internal DOJ communications this month reportedly instructed senior prosecutors that the deputy attorney general’s office would have final say on whether to pursue election‑fraud cases, a shift from the traditional discretion of career prosecutors and a move that has unsettled some attorneys.
Critics warn that the heightened focus on non‑citizen voting could be used to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the upcoming November 3 elections, where control of the Senate and House hangs in the balance, and could lay groundwork for future challenges to election results.