Administration's focus on noncitizen voting has led to 160 arrests. Experts say that shows it's rare

The Trump administration's effort to identify and prosecute noncitizens on state voter rolls has led to about 1,600 voter fraud cases, resulting in 160 arrests, according to Matthew Millhollin, a senior official at Homeland Security Investigations. The announcement comes six weeks before the November midterms, providing a rare update on the initiative that has redirected federal resources and manpower to investigate potential election fraud.

The numbers are far below the hundreds of thousands of noncitizen voters that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security previously claimed were on the rolls, and represent a tiny fraction of the country's over 211 million active registered voters. Experts, including former Justice Department attorney David Becker, say that these findings confirm that voter fraud, including voting by noncitizens, is rare.

Millhollin shared the arrest data at a press briefing with the Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service, alongside charges against a Utah postal worker for removing over 300 mail ballots during the state's June primary. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter stated that 70 people have been charged since the start of the administration with unlawful voting and registration offenses.

Neither Millhollin nor McCotter provided details on the specific charges or whether the data sets overlapped. Homeland Security Investigations, a subagency of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, primarily focuses on immigration-related crimes. The administration's focus on noncitizen voting has been fueled by claims that it is rampant, despite research indicating that such fraud is incredibly rare.

Trump has signed two election-related executive orders addressing the issue, but they are currently under legal challenges. He has also pressured states to use a federal voter database, which has been blocked by a federal judge for violating Americans' privacy, and pushed for legislation that has stalled. In a last-ditch effort to investigate noncitizen voters without comprehensive data, DHS ordered a group of US Citizenship and Immigration Services staff to conduct a full-time manual review of state voter rolls in August.

However, a federal whistleblower warned that this approach could potentially violate state laws and may incorrectly accuse US citizens. State election officials in Texas investigated 2,724 registered voters flagged as noncitizens by Trump's federal voter database, referring 117 cases to the Texas attorney general's office for further investigation.