(TEXAS, NORTH CAROLINA) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtained individual voter files from local election administrators in Texas in May 2026 and from county officials in North Carolina in November 2025 as part of a Trump administration effort to identify cases of illegal immigrant voting and build deportation cases against non-citizens found in election records.

The effort ran through ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, which sought registration histories and participation data from local and state election offices. Records described HSI requests in Webb County, Texas, Forsyth County, North Carolina, and at the Texas Secretary of State’s office, where an HSI criminal analyst asked for detailed voter data in April 2026.

Department of Homeland Security officials tied the work to a broader election fraud push that now treats voting-related evidence as an immigration enforcement trigger. A DHS spokesperson said on June 13, 2026, “HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.”

DHS General Counsel James Percival formalized that approach on June 9, 2026, when he directed ICE to prioritize the removal of non-citizens found to have voted illegally. Percival said, “The importance of free, fair, and honest elections is without question. Echoing the words of President Trump, ‘the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.’ Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy. It must have consequences.”

That directive moved voter records from an election administration issue into an immigration enforcement file. It allows ICE to begin administrative removal proceedings based on evidence drawn from voter registration files and state election data without a criminal conviction.

Webb County election administrators in Texas turned over individual voter files to HSI investigators in May 2026. In Forsyth County, North Carolina, HSI agents requested and received registration records for specific voters in November 2025 as part of a fraud investigation.

State-level records in Texas show how detailed those requests became. An HSI criminal analyst contacted the Texas Secretary of State’s general counsel in April 2026 seeking “dates and methods of registration” and “elections in which they participated.”

The enforcement campaign rests in part on Executive Order 14248, signed by President Trump on March 25, 2025, under the title “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” Federal agencies have since widened the exchange of voter data across immigration, election, and law enforcement offices.

That coordination now includes HSI, the Department of Justice, and the Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force. The Justice Department also issued a [memo on authority to obtain and share statewide voter roll data](https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/authority-obtain-share-voter-data) on May 12, 2026 and filed lawsuits against states including California and Oregon after they refused to provide unredacted voter rolls containing Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

Federal officials have also leaned on immigration databases to examine voter files. A USCIS [Voter Registration and Voter List Maintenance Fact Sheet](https://www.uscis.gov/save/voter-registration-fact-sheet), updated on Feb 2, 2026, said more than 27 states use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program to verify citizenship status for people on voter rolls.

Heather Honey, DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity, said DHS has “engaged with every state secretary or chief election official” across the country to enforce compliance with federal eligibility verification. That statement placed county record requests in Texas and North Carolina inside a national campaign rather than isolated local inquiries.

The administration has presented the campaign as a response to illegal immigrant voting, but the data requests also raise a jurisdictional fight over who controls election records and how they may be used. State and county election offices traditionally maintain voter files under state law, while ICE normally uses immigration and criminal records to identify removable non-citizens.

Watchdog groups said the new use of voter files carries privacy risks because those records can contain personally identifiable information and because federal database matching can produce false positives. Democracy Forward and American Oversight warned that errors in citizenship checks can pull lawful residents and other legally present non-citizens into enforcement scrutiny.

The consequences described by DHS reach beyond a criminal case. People identified through voter files, including lawful permanent residents who may have mistakenly registered, can face stricter penalties, expedited deportation, and permanent bars from naturalization if ICE treats the records as proof of a removable offense.

DHS publicly framed the policy in a [June 9, 2026 newsroom announcement](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/06/09/dhs-directs-ice-deport-aliens-who-vote-american-elections) directing ICE to deport aliens who vote in American elections. Combined with HSI requests for voter files in Webb County and Forsyth County, the order shows how local election records, once kept inside county administration offices, now sit inside federal immigration casework.