Trump's Noncitizen Voting Hunt Found Just 160 Arrests

The Trump administration launched a whole-of-government hunt for noncitizens illegally registered to vote. After months of redirected federal resources and hundreds of reassigned employees, the results are in: about 1,600 potential fraud cases and 160 arrests. Election experts say those numbers prove the opposite of what the crackdown was meant to show — that noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare.

Homeland Security Investigations senior official Matthew Millhollin disclosed the figures at a press briefing on September 22, just six weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, according to reporting by the Associated Press. The announcement offered a rare status update on an initiative President Donald Trump ordered to root out what he has long claimed — without evidence — is widespread illegal voting by noncitizens.

The scale of the findings falls far short of the hundreds of thousands of noncitizen voters that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security previously suggested were on state voter rolls. The 1,600 cases represent a tiny fraction of the more than 211 million active registered voters nationwide.

What the experts say

Former election officials and election law experts say the administration's own numbers confirm what research has shown for years: voter fraud, including voting by noncitizens, is rare — and states are already good at catching it.

"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, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who leads the nonprofit 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."

The gap between the rhetoric and the results is striking. The administration framed the effort as uncovering a massive hidden problem. Instead, after deploying federal investigators across the country, it found a rate of roughly one case for every 132,000 registered voters.

The Utah ballot case

Millhollin shared the arrest data at a joint briefing with the Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service. The event centered on federal charges against a Utah postal worker accused of throwing out more than 300 mail ballots during the state's June primary — a case of alleged election misconduct, but not one involving noncitizen voting.

At the same briefing, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the Justice Department had charged 70 people since the start of the administration with what he called "unlawful voting and registration offenses."

The juxtaposition was notable: the headline example of fraud the administration chose to spotlight involved an American postal worker discarding ballots, not a noncitizen casting one.

Why this matters before the midterms

The timing matters. With the November 3 midterms just weeks away, claims about election integrity shape how people vote — and whether they vote at all. False or exaggerated claims of widespread fraud can discourage participation, particularly among young and first-time voters who are still building the habit.

The facts, as established by the administration's own investigation, point the other way. Multiple studies over the past decade have found noncitizen voting rates between 0.0003% and 0.001% — effectively zero in any race. The new federal numbers land in the same range.

That doesn't mean election security doesn't matter. States have steadily improved their voter-roll maintenance, cross-checking registrations against citizenship and residency records. The system the experts describe isn't perfect, but the evidence says it's working.

What Gen Z should do right now

If you're eligible to vote, the most important thing isn't worrying about fraud — it's making sure you're registered. Deadlines are approaching fast: Oklahoma's registration deadline for the November 3 election is October 9, and other states have cutoffs in the coming days. California voters can find their county's early voting and ballot-drop options through the state's voter guide.

Check your registration status now, not the week of the election. If you've moved for school or work — as millions of young people do — your registration may not have followed you. It takes a few minutes to verify, and it's the single highest-leverage thing you can do for your own civic power.

Read the AP's full report on the findings and the LA Post's coverage of the briefing. For more on this story and others like it, follow our latest politics coverage and front-page headlines.