ICE Investigators Begin Demanding Personal Data on Individual Voters From Local Authorities—Two Counties Have Already Handed It Over

Trump claimed that, in his view, millions of people, including noncitizens, vote illegally, and used this to explain his loss in the popular vote in 2016 and his defeat in the 2020 election.

Confirmed cases of voting by noncitizens, however, are rare. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, tracks court rulings and election-fraud data. Its database lists 100 documented cases of noncitizen voting from 1982 to 2025.

Agents from Homeland Security Investigations—the investigative arm of ICE—asked county election officials in Texas in May for specific voter files. This is shown by emails obtained through records requests by the organization Democracy Forward.

Another request showed that a different HSI agent in November of last year asked for the registration records of two voters in Forsyth County, North Carolina.

In Webb County, Texas, and Forsyth County, North Carolina, voter files were handed over to HSI, according to the emails.

HSI’s fraud task force has investigated election-related violations before, but such cases made up a relatively small part of its work.

Those requests were preceded by an April email from an HSI “criminal analyst” to the general counsel of the Texas secretary of state. In it, the analyst asked what information and what types of subpoenas were needed to obtain the information.

“As part of ongoing investigations,” the analyst wrote, “I am requesting information regarding obtaining voter data, specifically dates and methods of registration, elections in which they participated, etc.”

Voter files can include registration history, address, date of birth, driver’s license number and voting history.

“Using ICE to pursue such a rare problem should concern everyone. […] Americans have a right to understand the full scope of the administration’s actions,” said Dan McGrath, senior oversight counsel at Democracy Forward.

Webb County elections administrator Jose Castillo said he had not previously encountered such requests. According to him, after the requests reflected in the documents, he received another, more recent inquiry from HSI.

“There’s nothing there. But I understand, you have to do your job,” Castillo said. “In my view, they could use their resources for something more useful.”

Castillo now directs HSI to the public-records request process. In Texas, voter data is public information.

According to Castillo, in four years he has seen two cases of noncitizen voting among more than 150,000 voters.

DHS said it cannot comment on active investigations, but that HSI “actively identifies and investigates election fraud wherever it may be found.”

“We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring the integrity of election systems and ensuring that American leaders are chosen by American citizens—and only American citizens,” a DHS spokesperson said.

According to emails obtained through the records request, Heather Honey, an “election integrity” activist who became known after challenging the results of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania and Arizona, also contacted the general counsel of the Texas secretary of state directly.

On March 25, Honey, who serves as deputy assistant secretary of homeland security for election integrity, held a virtual meeting with Texas’s general counsel and six employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This is shown by the email chain.

“DHS regularly engages with our state and local partners, including the State of Texas. In this instance, we wanted to discuss how DHS can better support the secretary of state’s office and collaborate on shared goals,” Honey wrote in response to emailed questions.

Honey did not specify how many election offices she had contacted directly, but said the department had “engaged with every secretary of state or chief election official.”

Texas’s general counsel did not respond to a request for comment.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order stating that the United States does not currently adequately protect elections or enforce federal law. The document specifically mentioned the need to “prohibit noncitizens from registering to vote.”

DHS was also instructed to investigate alleged election fraud and promote the use of the SAVE database—Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements—so that local election officials could check the citizenship of people on voter rolls.

This week, DHS general counsel James Percival also issued a memorandum asking ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Adviser to “ensure consequences” for noncitizens who took part in voting, as part of deportation hearings “to the fullest extent permitted by law.”