The news that ICE accessed voter files in two counties has raised fresh alarm among voting rights advocates, who see it as part of a broader federal push to investigate a form of fraud that records show is exceedingly rare. According to an Axios report, immigration agents obtained personal voter information directly from local election officials in Texas and North Carolina.

What Happened

Election officials in Forsyth County, North Carolina, and Webb County, Texas, handed over voter file information to agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit. The disclosures were part of the Trump administration’s stated effort to uncover instances of noncitizens casting ballots.

The data wasn’t limited to broad lists. Emails obtained through public records requests show that records on specific, individual voters were turned over to HSI in both counties.

A Problem the Data Doesn’t Support

At the heart of the controversy is a striking gap between the scale of the federal effort and the actual evidence of wrongdoing. There have been vanishingly few cases of noncitizens intentionally voting illegally, and no documented instances of it occurring on any widespread scale.

The numbers reinforce that point:

• The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that tracks such cases, documented roughly 100 instances of noncitizen voting between 1982 and 2025.
• In Webb County, the election administrator said he had seen just two cases of a noncitizen voting out of more than 150,000 voters over four years.

Despite this, President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted, without supporting facts, that noncitizen voting is widespread.

How the Requests Unfolded

The records paint a picture of an escalating campaign. According to the emails, HSI’s investigative arm requested the individual voter files in May, with related requests stretching back to November of the previous year and continuing since.

The effort appears to have begun with groundwork laid earlier in the spring. In April, an HSI criminal analyst emailed the general counsel of the Texas Secretary of State’s office, seeking guidance on how to obtain voter information, including the dates and methods of registration and which elections people had voted in, and what subpoenas might be required to gather it. A separate request from another HSI agent in November sought registration details for two specific voters in Forsyth County.

A County Official Pushes Back

The reaction on the ground was notably skeptical. Webb County election administrator Jose Castillo said he had never seen requests like these before and had received yet another from HSI since those revealed in the records.

Castillo was blunt about the lack of substance behind the inquiries, remarking that there was nothing there, while acknowledging that agents had a job to do. He suggested the resources could be better spent elsewhere and said he was now directing HSI to seek voter data through formal public records requests, noting that such data is public information in Texas anyway.

A Familiar Face at DHS

The campaign also features a figure with a controversial background in election disputes. Heather Honey, a senior election integrity official at the Department of Homeland Security, has been in direct contact with the Texas Secretary of State’s general counsel, and requested voter information in April.

Before joining DHS, Honey was an election conspiracy activist who became prominent challenging the 2020 results in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona, in an unsuccessful bid to overturn the outcome in Trump’s favor. In her current role, she has sought voter data from the Justice Department to search for fraud, and told Axios that her agency had engaged with every state secretary or chief election official.

Part of a Wider Federal Push

The dispatching of ICE agents to gather voter files is only the latest federal move into territory traditionally controlled by states and counties, which hold constitutional authority over managing elections. Trump’s Justice Department has separately been engaged in an aggressive effort to obtain voter data from every U.S. state.

That broader campaign has already met resistance in North Carolina, where officials balked at a sweeping demand for millions of voting records, prompting a federal prosecutor to postpone the compliance deadline amid concerns it would disrupt critical election tasks.

Voting rights advocates argue the approach is fundamentally disproportionate. Dan McGrath, senior oversight counsel for the pro-voting legal organization Democracy Forward, which obtained the emails, warned that using ICE to pursue a problem this rare should concern everyone.

Stiffer Penalties on the Table

The investigative push is being paired with a tougher enforcement stance. On June 9, DHS General Counsel James Percival instructed ICE to pursue stricter penalties for noncitizens found voting illegally, including deportation.

Percival framed the issue in stark terms, arguing that illegal voting by noncitizens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines democracy, and declaring that it must carry consequences. For its part, a DHS spokesperson defended the work, stating that while the agency could not comment on active investigations, HSI was actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it could be found.

The Bigger Picture

The episode underscores a growing tension between an administration determined to root out a rare phenomenon and the local officials and advocates who question whether the effort justifies the intrusion into private voter data. With the requests continuing and penalties hardening, the collection of individual voter files by immigration agents is likely to remain a flashpoint in the larger fight over who controls American elections and how far federal authorities can reach into them.