ICE Obtains Local Voter Files in Texas and North Carolina Counties
ICE investigators obtained individual voter files from two counties in Texas and North Carolina according to emails shared with Axios.
Objective Facts
ICE investigators are going straight to local election officials for individual voter files, and they obtained them in two counties, according to emails shared with Axios by Democracy Forward, a legal organization that investigates potential abuses of government power, showing that records on specific voters were turned over to Homeland Security Investigations from Webb County in Texas and Forsyth County in North Carolina. HSI requested the individual voter files this May and in November 2025, and has made similar requests since. HSI also requested voter information from Texas's Secretary of State office in April, as did Department of Homeland Security senior "election integrity" official Heather Honey. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, tracks convictions and court records of voter fraud and shows 100 documented cases of non-citizen voting between 1982 and 2025. Webb County election administrator Jose Castillo said "There's nothing there. But I get it, you've got to do your job," and added "To me, they could use their resources for something else that's more useful."
Left-Leaning Perspective
Left-leaning outlets and voting rights groups have raised immediate concerns about ICE's direct access to local voter files. Democracy Forward Senior Oversight Counsel Dan McGrath stated that "Using ICE to pursue a problem this rare should concern everyone," asserting that "Americans have a right to understand the full scope of the administration's actions." The Intercept published a piece arguing that the DHS "is quickly metastasizing into a grave threat to the midterms, public safety, and our democracy," noting that even though election integrity official Heather Honey told election officials that ICE would not be at polling sites, "state officials reportedly weren't reassured," and advocacy organizations warned that even the possibility could have a "chilling" effect on turnout. WHYY reported that "self-styled election investigators who have thrown themselves into election conspiracy theories since 2020 are now being celebrated by a presidential administration that indulges their false claims," and noted that Honey's role "comes as Trump has used election integrity concerns as a pretext to try to give his administration power over how elections are run in the U.S." The left emphasizes the absence of documented widespread non-citizen voting and the privacy risks posed by federal data collection. According to Theresa Lee, a voting rights attorney at the ACLU, "there are court precedents in several circuits making clear that sensitive information can be redacted when elections officials disclose voter roll data." The Brennan Center for Justice noted that "The administration's attempts to collect sensitive voter information on a massive scale pose risks to voters and election officials," and emphasized that "Requesting voter registration databases from such a large number of states, however, is unprecedented. This bid by the federal government to gather voter records from across the country is cause for concern and poses risks to voters and election officials." Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) stated that she "served as Nevada's Attorney General for two terms, and I helped prosecute voter fraud. In eight years, I can count on two hands how many cases of voter fraud we found, and they were all prosecuted." Left-leaning coverage largely omits discussion of specific instances where non-citizens have voted or been detected attempting to vote, and downplays the administration's stated rationale that federal verification tools can identify registration errors. The focus remains on the rare documented cases and the constitutional concerns about federal overreach rather than engaging with the administration's claim that verification databases like SAVE can find problematic registrations.
Right-Leaning Perspective
Right-leaning outlets and Trump administration officials have framed ICE's acquisition of voter files as a necessary law enforcement action to detect and prevent illegal voting. A DHS spokesperson stated that "HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found," and added "We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections." Fox News reported exclusively that "The Department of Homeland Security has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants who vote in American elections," noting that DHS is "enforcing stricter penalties against those who fraudulently cast ballots." Trump characterized his proposed SAVE America Act as addressing fraud and stated "Congress should unite and enact this common-sense, country-saving legislation right now and it should be before anything else happens," later insisting it "supersedes everything else." The right emphasizes both the existence of non-citizen voting cases and the need for federal coordination to detect them. A DHS statement quoted in Axios asserted "We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders." Fox News reported that supporters of the SAVE Act "say the measure would strengthen election integrity and restore trust in the voting process," while critics "argue there is little evidence of widespread fraud and warn the requirement could make it harder for eligible Americans to vote." The Heritage Foundation argued that "Americans disagree on many areas of immigration policy, but not on the basic principle that only citizens should be able to vote in elections," and that "To keep non-citizens from diluting citizens' votes, immigration and election officials must cooperate far more effectively." Right-leaning coverage downplays concerns about privacy and federal overreach, framing these as secondary to the duty to verify citizenship. It does not extensively engage with critiques that verification tools like SAVE are error-prone or that the actual prevalence of non-citizen voting is vanishingly small.
Deep Dive
The ICE voter file requests represent the latest escalation in the Trump administration's multi-pronged effort to centralize control over election verification and voter rolls. The immediate context includes Trump's pursuit since January 2025 of efforts to expand federal control over the country's historically state-run election infrastructure, combined with the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, stalling in the Senate despite Trump's push. Heather Honey, who was an election conspiracy activist before joining DHS as a newly created "election integrity" official, has been directly involved in requesting voter data from Texas. The administration frames this as routine election security work, while critics see it as building infrastructure for politically motivated voter purges. Both perspectives contain partial truths with significant blind spots. The right's claim that election officials should cooperate with federal verification efforts reflects a legitimate interest in accurate voter rolls—counties that checked lists flagged by citizenship verification tools against state driver's license records found "more than 5% of the voters SAVE identified as noncitizens proved to be citizens," indicating some false positives exist that require careful review. However, the right systematically downplays both the rarity of actual non-citizen voting and the well-documented accuracy problems in verification tools. The left correctly identifies that Heritage Foundation data shows only 100 documented cases of non-citizen voting between 1982 and 2025, making this an extraordinarily uncommon phenomenon, yet left-leaning coverage sometimes conflates concerns about federal overreach (legitimate) with concerns about voter verification efforts generally (which election officials across the spectrum conduct). Notably, Webb County's Jose Castillo told ICE it could "use their resources for something else that's more useful," suggesting even officials willing to cooperate question the prioritization. The unresolved question is whether courts will constrain federal data collection. A federal judge in January blocked the administration's bid to obtain confidential information from California, with Judge David O. Carter stating the Civil Rights Act wasn't meant for this purpose, but the DOJ continues pursuing similar requests. The June 2026 SAVE Act failure in the Senate suggests the legislative path is blocked, yet ICE's direct requests to county officials represent an administrative end-run around legislative gridlock. What to watch: whether additional court orders will limit ICE's access to voter files, whether other counties follow Webb County's approach of directing ICE to formal public records requests, and whether the administration's parallel DOJ litigation for voter data ultimately succeeds or fails.