The Department of Justice sent a letter to dozens of state and local election officials threatening to prosecute them if any noncitizens are found to have voted in the upcoming midterms, sharply escalating the Trump administration’s attacks on local election oversight across the country.
The letter was signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, a staunch Trump ally who is serving as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division.
It’s the latest in a series of attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to exert control over state-run elections.
Trump has pushed for Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship at the time of registration and a photo ID verification when voters cast their ballots. The SAVE America Act received bipartisan pushback from lawmakers and is currently at a standstill in the Senate because it lacks the support needed to advance the bill.
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The president’s efforts to crackdown on states’ administration of elections have also faced multiple courtroom losses, which prompted Department of Homeland Security officials to consider using grant funding allocated to states — and the threat of withholding it — to “advance core national security priorities.”
“Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s SVRL [State Voter Registration List] or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability,” Dhillon wrote in the letter. It’s unclear how many officials were targeted by the administration.
Election workers have five days to respond to the Justice Department with plans to comply with the federal, state and local election laws. The Justice Department confirmed in a statement that it sent letters to officials of all states and Washington, D.C., “asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections.”
The push is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to crack down on noncitizen voting, which experts say is extremely rare.
“Noncitizen registration is already rare, and noncitizen voting is even less common,” a February report from the Bipartisan Policy Center said.
It’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Any noncitizen who attempts to break the federal law could be fined, imprisoned for up to one year, or both. “This is what panic and desperation looks like,” David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department who now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The New York Times. “They’ve had 18 months to find evidence of a crime that was never committed, and found nothing. And now they fall back on crude and transparent bullying tactics.”
Trump issued an executive order in March directing the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create a “state citizenship list,” documenting people who are U.S. citizens and will be at least 18 years old by the next federal election. The order also instructed the U.S. Postal service to add more tracking features for absentee and mail ballots.
A federal judge in D.C. blocked the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, tool from being used in upcoming elections. The SAVE system was originally intended to verify the citizenship status of those applying for federal benefits, but Trump overhauled the tool by combining it with other databases to create a national voter database.
However, a federal judge in Florida granted an emergency motion on Tuesday allowing Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana to use the SAVE tool by enforcing a prior settlement agreement with the Homeland Security Department from November 2025.
The language in the Justice Department’s new letter leaves the door open for broad enforcement, including the prosecution of public officials.
“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation,” the Justice Department wrote.
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