ICE reportedly acquires 50 million voter roll records, democracy watchdog says this ‘should concern all Americans’

A democracy watchdog has sounded the alarm after a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has acquired the voter roll records for 50.6 million Americans.

That’s not all. IB Times reports that the request, made in April 2026, revealed that ICE now has 48.4 million records relating to voting behavior, and 26,235 records from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which identify Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas as priority states for ICE to monitor.

The stated reason is to tackle the “problem” of non-citizen voting, i.e., fraudulent votes from immigrants. However, official figures reveal that this is practically a non-issue in America. FactCheck.org, reporting in April 2025, pointed out that these votes represent 0.0001% or less of votes cast. Or, in real figures, even the Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database (a conservative project!) could only identify 23–24 proven instances of non-citizen voting between 2003–2023.

It appears the president and his allies want to pick their voters

So, if non-citizen voting is objectively not an issue, why does ICE want all this data on Americans’ voting habits? Democracy Forward president and CEO, Skye Perryman, argues it may be a premonition of dark things ahead:

“The information revealed in the documents should concern all Americans and is further evidence of an alarming attempt by the executive branch to undermine our elections. It appears the president and his allies want to pick their voters, as opposed to the way things are supposed to function in a democracy where voters pick their leaders.

If not for the laws that protect the public’s right to know what their government is doing, the public likely would have never known about these concerning schemes. We will continue to use all legal tools to expose threats to our elections and to challenge them swiftly.”

Hart Wood, Democracy Forward’s senior oversight counsel, also argued that this is a harbinger of the Trump administration’s attempts to delegitimize the November vote, saying: This trove of ICE documents provides chilling new insights into the breadth and depth of the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to pursue baseless claims of widespread election fraud and assert greater federal control over elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.”

Wood also identified 2024 “election denier” Heather Honey as being central to this gathering of voter data, arguing that the information shows “for the first time, that HSI may be using undercover agents to investigate non-profits for purely political reasons.” 

ICE has not responded to these claims, but despite non-citizen voting not really being a problem, it has vowed to devote the time and resources to stamping it out. MarkWayne Mullin said (via DHS.gov), “Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences, including criminal charges and deportation.”