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

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration’s whole-of-government effort to find and prosecute noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls has resulted in about 1,600 voter fraud cases that have led to 160 arrests, Homeland Security Investigations senior official Matthew Millhollin said in a press briefing Tuesday. The numbers unveiled just six weeks before Election Day provide a rare status update on an initiative that has redirected federal resources and hundreds of employees to search for foul play in elections at the direction of President Donald Trump. They fall far short of the hundreds of thousands of noncitizen voters that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security have previously suggested were on the rolls.

They also represent a tiny fraction of the country’s more than 211 million active registered voters, underscoring what former election officials and election law experts say is a proven fact: Voter fraud, including voting by noncitizens, is rare. “They have tried to manufacture evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and every time they do, their numbers are incredibly small, even when they’re overstated,” said David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research.

“They confirm what we’ve known for years, which is that states have been doing an extraordinarily good job of keeping noncitizens off their voter lists.” Millhollin shared the arrest data at a joint press briefing with the Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service about DOJ charges against a Utah postal worker for throwing out more than 300 mail ballots during the state’s June primary. In the same briefing, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the DOJ had charged 70 people since the start of the administration with “unlawful voting and registration offenses.” Neither Millhollin nor McCotter clarified exactly what charges their data included, or whether they overlapped.

Homeland Security Investigations, as a subagency of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is generally focused on immigration-related crimes. A Justice Department spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for clarification.

Ahead of November’s midterms, which will determine control of Congress for the final two years of his term, Trump has taken extensive measures to try to crack down on noncitizen voting.