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States that voluntarily submitted data to a federal program learned there was not evidence of the kind of widespread non-citizen voting Trump frequently claims is occurring
Josh Marcus in San Francisco Thursday 15 January 2026 00:33 GMT- Bookmark
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A federal review of voter data found no evidence of widespread voting fraud by non-citizens, contradicting frequent claims from the president and his allies that undocumented immigrants are flocking to the polls.
Under the Trump administration, states and local election departments have voluntarily submitted voter records to the Department of Homeland Security for review.
After checking about 49.5 million voter registrations, the department referred about 10,000 cases to Homeland Security Investigations for further inspection, officials told The New York Times, and not all of the flagged individuals have necessarily voted.
At least 14 Republican-controlled secretary of state’s offices have committed publicly to using the federal review tool, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, a government program designed not for election reviews but for vetting applicants for programs like driver's licenses and Social Security benefits.
Researchers have long said there is no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting, but President Trump and his supporters frequently claim the contrary.
open image in galleryFederal investigators have found no evidence that non-citizens are voting en masse, contradicting Donald Trump’s frequent claims to the contrary (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)In March, President Trump signed an executive order requiring proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form. Multiple federal courts have rejected parts of the order, including in a decision last week in Oregon.
The Trump administration is also suing 23, mostly Democrat-led states, as part of a separate DOJ effort to obtain sensitive voting data, a campaign that has set off alarm bells for privacy experts and Democratic lawmakers, who fear such information could be fed into the Trump administration’s deportation regime.
The president has used claims of fraudulent voting activity to justify his military-style crackdowns on mostly Democratic-led cities.
“These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens,” Trump wrote in a June post on Truth Social.
open image in galleryThe Trump administration has used claims of mass migrant voter fraud as part of its justification to launch immigration crackdowns in cities across the country (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)Trump ally Elon Musk has sounded a similar note.
“By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk said in March on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast. “And buy voters. Basically, bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California.”
On the campaign trail, Trump and JD Vance often claimed the Democratic Party was in league with non-citizen voters to fraudulently sway elections.
open image in galleryResearchers have long found that there’s little to no evidence of masses of non-citizens voting illegally (Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)"A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote," Trump said in September during one of the presidential debates. "They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in, practically."
“When [Kamala Harris] let in millions of illegal aliens,” Vance told a rally in Michigan that August. “It made our communities less safe — but it did give the Democrats a lot of voters.”
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