Seven individuals living in the country illegally—or as lawful permanent residents—have reportedly been slapped with federal charges in Texas for allegedly voting in American elections or lying about their citizenship status, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday, in the latest flashpoint of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on noncitizen voting.
The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas unveiled the charges as part of a sweeping push by President Trump to expose what he says is rampant fraud in the nation’s election system—even as critics and researchers continue to insist such cases are exceedingly rare.
District Attorney Ryan Raybould didn’t mince words, making clear this wasn’t some innocent mix-up. Investigators determined the alleged conduct was not a misunderstanding or paperwork error, he said—a direct rebuke to those who claim these cases are merely bureaucratic slip-ups.
The bombshell announcement was teased earlier in the day by U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who stood before reporters at the White House and promised a “big development” on illegal voting out of Texas.
According to Raybould’s office, the seven defendants either cast ballots or attempted to during the 2024 and 2018 general elections. Others are accused of lying about their citizenship on a driver’s license application or knowingly registering to vote despite not being eligible. Investigators stopped short of alleging any coordination among the seven.
The accused range in age from 20 to 69, hailing from Mexico, India, Nigeria and Congo. Six of the seven were lawful permanent residents. One had already been ordered deported back in July.
This latest bust is just one piece of a much larger campaign by the Trump administration to root out noncitizen voting nationwide. The president has pushed the U.S. Postal Service to restrict mail ballots to citizens who’ve been verified—though the Supreme Court shot that plan down Monday. The Justice Department has also gone to court to force 30 states and Washington, D.C. to hand over detailed voter roll data, though those legal efforts have so far come up empty.
Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security staffers have been digging through state voter rolls hunting for noncitizens on the rolls—an operation that a whistleblower this week suggested may be running afoul of state law.
In Texas alone, officials investigated 2,724 registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens in 2025 after cross-referencing the state’s voter rolls against a federal citizenship database. On Tuesday, the secretary of state’s office revealed that 117 of those cases have now been kicked over to the state attorney general for further investigation—though that’s still a tiny sliver of the nearly 18 million registered voters in the Lone Star State.
Notably, one of the units behind Tuesday’s charges operates under Attorney General Ken Paxton, who happens to be locked in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races this cycle against Democrat James Talarico.
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