Noncitizen voter subpoenas have become the Trump administration's newest and broadest tool in its hunt for unlawful voting, with Reuters reporting on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, that federal authorities have issued more than 100 subpoenas demanding records on tens of thousands of voters in at least a dozen states in the run-up to next week's midterm elections.
Most of the subpoenas were issued to state and local election officials in the past three months, although some date back to the start of the year, and many had not previously been reported. Together, they reveal a federal effort to identify potential noncitizen voters that is considerably larger than was publicly known, and they arrive six days before voters decide control of Congress on November 3.
Reuters identified the subpoenas through public-records requests and interviews with local and state officials. The demands varied widely in scope, from records on individual voters to demands for entire local voter rolls containing tens of thousands of names. None of the jurisdictions contacted said they were resisting the subpoenas.
The subpoenas were issued by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, and they offer another route to the same voter information at the heart of a wider campaign. Armed Homeland Security agents have questioned residents in several states about their immigration status and voting, while the Justice Department has sued 30 states that refused to provide voter rolls containing sensitive personal information such as driver's licence numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
A federal judge largely halted Homeland Security's field operations in nine states on October 21, and courts have ruled against the Justice Department in every voter-roll case so far, although many of those cases remain under appeal. The subpoenas, by contrast, are legally binding orders requiring recipients to produce documents or evidence, and grand jury subpoenas in particular are generally harder to challenge than administrative subpoenas issued directly by federal agencies.
The Justice Department declined to confirm or deny its use of subpoenas in noncitizen voter investigations, but said it "will enforce the law wherever the evidence leads." The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Reuters' questions.
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in US federal elections, and the administration has made that prohibition a centrepiece of its election-integrity drive. Since President Donald 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, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and federal records. Most of those cases remain unresolved, and they amount to fewer than one for every million people who voted in 2024.
Multiple studies and the Reuters analysis have found that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare. Former US attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton, who served in the Republican administration of George W. Bush, told Reuters the subpoenas were "clearly a distraction" for local and state election officials. "In my time as a federal prosecutor, we prosecuted people who shouldn't have voted, but it was so infrequent as to never even come close to altering the outcome of an election," he said.
Trump has repeatedly portrayed noncitizen voting as a grave threat. In a nationally televised address in July, he said his administration had identified more than 275,000 noncitizen voters, which the White House said were in four Democratic-leaning states. State officials disputed those assertions. 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 that those remaining individuals were all citizens.
The stakes on November 3 are high. Democrats need to gain four Senate seats and five House seats to take control of Congress, which would give them power to launch investigations into the Trump administration and Trump family business dealings. Elections are administered primarily by the states, with the federal government playing a limited role, and under most state laws only losing candidates or voters can challenge election results. But the Justice Department could still take legal action to delay or block certification of winners, legal experts told Reuters.
Minnesota offers one clear example of how the campaign works. In the traditionally Democratic state, which has an unexpectedly competitive US Senate race this year, the administration issued subpoenas for voting records on dozens of people in the Minneapolis-area counties of Anoka and Hennepin, where it has carried out a major federal immigration crackdown. To date, the Justice Department has charged at least eight people from the two counties with voting as noncitizens. All of those cases are ongoing and no one has been convicted.
In California, the Justice Department has issued at least 17 subpoenas to governments in Democratic-leaning jurisdictions, including Los Angeles and San Diego counties. The state is home to at least two districts with competitive US House races and is typically slow to count ballots, with final results sometimes taking weeks. Some voting experts said the administration and its allies could use that counting period to amplify allegations of noncitizen voting and challenge the legitimacy of close races. Reuters also identified previously unreported subpoenas seeking voter records issued to Marin County and Fresno County. Fresno lies within California's 22nd Congressional District, a closely watched midterm battleground.
Heavily Democratic California also shows how such a fight could unfold. Its congressional seats could decide who controls the US House of Representatives. 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.
In Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold, local officials confirmed receiving at least four subpoenas for voting records. In reliably Democratic Massachusetts, one of the states where federal courts blocked the administration's voter-roll demands, a Trump-backed US attorney has targeted at least eight cities and towns with grand jury subpoenas, six of them not previously reported. At least three of the Massachusetts subpoenas required officials to provide a list of all registered voters, including names, addresses, party affiliations, birth dates, voting status and voter identification numbers. An accompanying letter, obtained from one city through a public-records request, urged recipients "not to disclose the existence of this subpoena or the fact of your compliance therewith, to anyone," although it said the request for secrecy was not mandatory.
In Lynn, Massachusetts, a city with a large Hispanic population, 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."
Other states where subpoenas have been issued include Washington, New York, Connecticut, Utah and Michigan. In Washington state this week, federal prosecutors said they had identified more than 400 noncitizens who appear to be registered to vote, and asked state election officials to set aside any current ballots from those individuals until their citizenship could be verified. The Washington secretary of state's office told Reuters it has received about 60 federal subpoenas in recent weeks seeking information on individual voters.
The White House defended the campaign in a statement to Reuters. "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 said. "Only Americans should be electing America's leaders." The administration has vowed to keep the effort a top priority, including through the deployment of hundreds of federal law enforcement agents.
Some election officials and lawyers told Reuters the investigations could bolster a false narrative that American elections are vulnerable to widespread fraud. In a closely divided country, they said, Trump and his allies could use those claims to attack the legitimacy of narrow defeats, particularly in tightly contested races.
Ben Berwick, a former Justice Department attorney who served in the Obama and Trump administrations and now leads the election law and litigation team at Protect Democracy, an advocacy group, said the investigations are "setting up" post-election challenges that, while legally weak, could sow chaos. Trump-aligned candidates who lose could argue that suspected noncitizen votes made it impossible to determine the rightful winner and seek to have ballots or even the election result thrown out, Berwick said.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has raised similar concerns for years, argues that weak verification procedures create opportunities for illegal voting and that voter fraud could affect the outcome of a close election. Voting-rights groups counter that repeated reviews have found no evidence of noncitizen voting on a scale that has changed an election outcome.
The administration has also threatened legal consequences for election officials who resist its demands. California officials objected after federal authorities threatened to prosecute election officials who did not act on the list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters. 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 October 19, the Justice Department said it had charged 28 people in California, all legal permanent residents, with voting as noncitizens or making false statements on voting or naturalization paperwork. California election officials have called the campaign a politically motivated distraction, noting that the cases uncovered so far amount to a tiny fraction of the state's more than 23 million registered voters.
The subpoena campaign matters because it sits at the intersection of two different stories about the 2026 midterms. The first is a law-enforcement story: a small number of people are accused of voting when they should not have, and the government says it is entitled to the records that prove it. The second is a political story: in a country where control of Congress may turn on a handful of close House and Senate races, a large, visible federal investigation into voter rolls can shape what voters believe about the result before a single ballot is counted.
That is why the choice of targets matters as much as the number of subpoenas. Democratic strongholds such as Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Los Angeles are not the places where a handful of improper votes would most plausibly change a statewide outcome, but they are places where an investigation is highly visible and where California's slow count gives allegations time to circulate. At the same time, the campaign reaches into Republican-leaning states with competitive races, including Texas, Kansas and Georgia, which the administration can point to as evidence that the effort is not confined to one party's territory.
The legal form matters too. Administrative demands for voter rolls have been blocked in court after court. Grand jury subpoenas, which account for at least 44 of the more than 100 documented demands, are tied to criminal investigations and are harder for local officials to resist. That makes them a more durable way for the federal government to obtain sensitive voter information, including names, addresses, party affiliations, birth dates and voter identification numbers, even as the underlying voter-roll lawsuits remain under appeal.
In the six days before November 3, election officials in the targeted jurisdictions will be working through the subpoenas while also running early voting and preparing for Election Day. None of the jurisdictions contacted by Reuters said they were resisting the subpoenas, which suggests the records will continue to flow to federal investigators in the final days of the campaign.
After the polls close, the real test may come in the counting period, particularly in California, where final results sometimes take weeks. If any House races there are close, expect the subpoenaed records, the disputed 20,000-name California list and the earlier voter-roll lawsuits to feature in arguments over which ballots should count and when winners can be certified.
Watch also for new criminal cases. Prosecutors have reported suspected new cases on a near-weekly basis, including the more than 400 people identified in Washington state this week and the 28 people charged in California on October 19. Each new case, however small in isolation, feeds the administration's broader claim that noncitizen voting is a significant problem, while critics will keep pointing to the same arithmetic: 147 accused voters against tens of millions of ballots cast in 2024.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: DOJ charges green card holders with illegal voting in 5 states ahead of midterms, California ballots hearing: judge questions DOJ bid to block 20,000 votes, and FEC hack hits US campaign finance filing system days before midterms.
What did Reuters find about noncitizen voter subpoenas? Reuters documented more than 100 subpoenas from the Trump administration demanding records on tens of thousands of voters in at least a dozen states, most issued in the past three months, with at least 44 issued under grand jury authority.
Is it illegal for noncitizens to vote in US federal elections? Yes. Federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and prosecutors have accused at least 147 people of illegally voting under a federal "voting by aliens" statute since Trump returned to office.
How common is noncitizen voting? Multiple studies and a Reuters analysis find it exceedingly rare. The 147 accused cases amount to fewer than one for every million people who voted in 2024, and state reviews have repeatedly revised large initial claims sharply downwards, as in Nevada, where nearly 16,000 alleged cases became fewer than 200 and then none.
Why do legal experts worry about post-election challenges? They say records obtained through subpoenas could be used to dispute close results or delay certification, even if the underlying claims are legally weak, particularly during California's lengthy ballot count.
What happens next before the midterms? Election officials continue to comply with the subpoenas while running early voting, and prosecutors are expected to announce further cases. The key dates are Election Day on November 3 and the days and weeks of counting that follow, especially in California.
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