The Hunt For Noncitizen Voters: 100 Subpoenas, A Lawsuit, And A Judge’s Refusal

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas demanding records on tens of thousands of voters in at least a dozen states, part of an escalating effort ahead of next week’s midterm elections to uncover evidence of unlawful voting by people who are not US citizens, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Most of the subpoenas were issued to state and local election officials in the past three months, though some date to the start of the year, and many were previously unreported — a federal effort broader than publicly known, now being fought in court on several fronts at once.

The Subpoena Campaign

At least 44 of the subpoenas were issued under the authority of grand juries, Reuters found, indicating they are tied to criminal investigations and making them generally harder to challenge in court than administrative subpoenas issued directly by federal agencies. They reach into Democratic strongholds including Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other California cities, and into Republican-leaning states with competitive races, including Texas, Kansas and Georgia; other states include Washington, New York, Connecticut, Utah and Michigan. Their scope varies widely, from records on individual voters to demands for entire local voter rolls containing tens of thousands of names. In Massachusetts, a Trump-backed US attorney has targeted at least eight cities and towns with grand jury subpoenas; at least three required officials to provide a list of all registered voters, including names, addresses, party affiliations, birth dates, voting status and voter identification numbers, and an accompanying letter urged recipients not to disclose the subpoena’s existence, though it said the request for secrecy was not mandatory. In Lynn, Massachusetts, federal prosecutors subpoenaed records for 25 to 30 people. “Up until now, they’ve found one instance of someone voting in an election that shouldn’t have been voting,” James Lamanna, the city’s clerk and election chief, told Reuters. “This doesn’t reach the level of something serious and pervasive that it would jeopardize the integrity of an election.” None of the jurisdictions contacted by Reuters said they were resisting the subpoenas.

The California Fight

California is where the campaign has met a judge. The Justice Department alleged this month that more than 20,000 “likely” noncitizens in California had received mail ballots and demanded that any ballots cast by them not be counted until their citizenship was verified. California officials refused and called the list unreliable, saying a review of 200 registrations found nearly 40 per cent appeared to be US-born. Acting US Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, who spearheaded the administration’s claims in California, acknowledged last week that the list could include US citizens. “We’re not perfect,” he said. On Wednesday, US District Judge David Carter rejected the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order barring officials from counting the ballots, after a hearing on Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court; a federal appeals court had already rejected, on Monday, an emergency request to block the counting before Carter could rule. The Justice Department, which filed the lawsuit on October 15, in a rare intervention in the voting process weeks before an election, did not indicate how many of the more than 20,000 people it flagged had actually submitted a mail ballot. California has 52 seats in the House of Representatives — more than any other state — and 23 million registered voters.

A Lawsuit Against The Initiative Itself

Also on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates sued in California federal court to end the administration’s Unlawful Voter Initiative, launched by the Department of Homeland Security in August, which directed US Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel to generate lists of individuals to investigate for possibly voting without being a US citizen. The lawsuit names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, and alleges the initiative has led to thousands of fully naturalized American citizens being subjected to improper investigations, door-to-door interrogations and potential disenfranchisement, in violation of the Civil Rights Act and laws governing privacy and administrative procedures. It seeks to vacate the initiative and asks for the destruction of records created and maintained as part of it. “The administration can’t keep creating political stunts to sow distrust in our elections and lay the groundwork to question results they don’t like,” said Theresa Lee, an attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. A federal judge last week placed limits on the initiative in nine states, but the plaintiffs said those restrictions expire at the end of Election Day on November 3. Armed Homeland Security agents have also questioned residents in several states about their immigration status and voting, and the Justice Department has sued 30 states that refused to provide voter rolls containing sensitive personal information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers; courts have ruled against the Justice Department in every voter-roll case so far, Reuters reported.

The Numbers, And The Stakes

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in US federal elections, and the White House says the problem is significant. “The Trump administration is sending a clear message that anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Reuters. “Only Americans should be electing America’s leaders.” The Justice Department declined to confirm or deny its use of subpoenas, but said it “will enforce the law wherever the evidence leads.” The recorded caseload is small: since President Trump returned to office, prosecutors have accused at least 147 people of illegally voting under a federal “voting by aliens” statute, including 102 since the start of September — fewer than one case for every million people who voted in 2024, by Reuters’ analysis, which also found, with multiple studies, that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare. In Nevada, federal officials initially claimed to have identified nearly 16,000 potential noncitizens on the voter rolls before revising the figure to fewer than 200; Nevada officials later concluded those remaining individuals were all citizens. Legal experts told Reuters the records could be used to contest results in close midterm races. The investigations are “setting up” post-election challenges that, while legally weak, could sow chaos, said Ben Berwick, a former Justice Department attorney who now leads the election law team at Protect Democracy. Democrats need to gain four Senate seats and five House seats to take control of Congress on November 3.

Sources: Reuters — reporting of October 28–29, 2026.