The Trump administration is most likely planning to announce sometime this year that it has evidence that large numbers of non-citizens are on state voting rolls, aided by non-profits it alleges recruit non-citizens. The DOJ and their State attorney general allies will (1) cite large number of non-citizens on voter rolls, (2) sue to close down non-profits which work to register naturalized immigrants and others, and (3) conduct highly publicized raids to collect data.
What the administration has done so far
According to the Brennan Center (as of February 13) since mid 2025 the DOJ has asked states to sign a confidential memorandum of understanding through which the states provide voter rolls and other data. Here is a copy of the memorandum.
11 states have either provided or said they will provide their full statewide voter registration lists, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
The Brennan Center writes that the DOJ has sued Washington, DC, and 24 states for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington. The cases in California, Michigan, and Oregon have been dismissed.
On January 28, 2026, the FBI executed a search warrant for records related to the 2020 election at the Fulton County, GA Election Hub and Operation Center. This is a one-off gambit tied expressly to the 2020 elections and the administration has no way to copy this in other states.
What the DOJ will attempt to do
A half dozen or more states have in the past ten years tried to identify non-citizens who are on the voter rolls. The standard approach is to match the citizen/non-citizen designation on Registry of Motor Vehicle records with voter rolls. There are many cases where a person on the voter rolls has self-identified as a non-citizen. When data system inconsistences are revolved, this number shrinks by 95-99%, and among the remainders there may be no evidence of actual voting. The overwhelmingly dominant reason for the apparently positive match is that state data bases are not aligned to reconcile continuously and because drivers mistakenly list themselves a non-citizens on RMV records.
These investigations have uniformly ended in embarrassment (here).
Texas serves as an example
In 2019, Texas Secretary of State David Whitley, using the standard method of matching state databases, assigned 95,000 voters for citizenship checks and set them up for possible criminal investigation.(Go here.) That campaign was terminated and resulted in a settlement of three federal lawsuits. Whitley resigned his job due to the fallout. Texas had at the time about 17 million registered voters. Following the settlement, some counties undertook a more careful protocol to identify non-citizens on voting lists. They found several hundred. One person was a staff member of the El Paso County election staff and had had a naturalization party at the office years before.
On August 21 2024, Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to the office’s press release, “has opened an investigation into reports [sic] that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote in violation of state and federal law.” Paxton said that his investigation involved undercover agents and raids on homes of individuals.
Paxton then tried to close down a Latino organization, Jolt Initiative. Per the Texas Tribune, Paxton filed a lawsuit in state court accusing Jolt of submitting “unlawful voter registration applications,” specifying in a press release that the group was “attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals.” The suit sought to revoke Jolt’s nonprofit charter through a legal mechanism known as a quo warranto petition. A Federal judge ruled against Paxton in November 2025.