The Department of Homeland Security has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove illegal immigrants who fraudulently vote in American elections, a move that puts real teeth behind a law already on the books but rarely enforced with deportation consequences.
DHS General Counsel James Percival sent the directive in a letter to ICE leadership on Monday, instructing the agency to enforce stricter penalties, including deportation, against those living in the country unlawfully who cast ballots, Fox News reported.
The letter invokes the Immigration and Nationality Act, which already directs removal of aliens who illegally vote in American elections. DHS stated that illegal voting and making a false claim of U.S. citizenship often go “hand-in-hand.” Noncitizens are legally barred from voting in state and federal elections. The new directive makes clear the administration intends to treat violations as deportable offenses, not paperwork problems.
Percival framed the directive in explicit terms, quoting President Donald Trump’s own language on election integrity:
“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.'”
He continued with a blunt warning:
“Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy. It must have consequences.”
The directive follows President Trump’s March 2025 executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” That order outlined changes to voter registration, voting machine standards, and mail-in ballot rules. It leaned heavily on the administration’s stated goals of preventing noncitizen voting and reducing systemic errors in elections.
The DHS directive arrives against a backdrop of actual prosecutions. In March, authorities charged Mauritanian citizen Mahady Sacko in connection with voter fraud. Sacko allegedly voted in every presidential election since 2008. That spans at least four presidential cycles, a sustained pattern of illegal participation in American elections by a foreign national.
Two months later, in May, four additional noncitizens were charged with allegedly voting illegally in multiple federal elections. Those four also allegedly made false statements while applying for U.S. citizenship. These cases illustrate the link DHS drew between illegal voting and fraudulent citizenship claims, a connection the department described as going “hand-in-hand.”
The outcomes of these cases remain unclear. But the charges themselves undercut the familiar assertion that noncitizen voting is so rare it barely warrants attention. When one foreign national allegedly votes in every presidential election for more than fifteen years, the system has a problem that goes beyond a clerical mix-up.
Accountability for public officials who abuse their positions has become a recurring theme across federal enforcement. In one recent case, DHS barred a former member of Congress from federal funds after alleged FEMA fraud, a reminder that the department is willing to act when it finds misconduct, regardless of political status.
The deportation directive is not the only recent action on this front. In August 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had updated its policy manual to bar green card holders who have voted or registered to vote from obtaining citizenship.
That policy change targets a different population, lawful permanent residents rather than illegal immigrants, but it reinforces the same principle. Voting is a right reserved for American citizens. Those who exercise it without that status now face consequences at every level of the immigration system, from the citizenship application window to the deportation pipeline.
Together, the Percival letter, the USCIS policy update, and the March executive order form a layered enforcement approach. Registration, ballot-casting, and citizenship applications all now carry consequences for noncitizens who attempt to participate in elections reserved for Americans.
The enforcement push comes as Congress continues to debate broader immigration funding. Senate Republicans recently pushed through $70 billion in ICE and Border Patrol funding after a marathon vote, signaling that the legislative branch is backing the administration’s enforcement posture with real money.
Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation, has described illegal immigrants as “perfect targets” for ballots that are “unaccountable.” Howell discussed the intersection of illegal immigrant voting and voter ID law controversies nationwide ahead of the 2024 presidential election, framing them as two sides of the same problem.
That framing, that lax voter ID laws and a large population of illegal immigrants create conditions ripe for fraud, has driven much of the conservative push for tighter election safeguards. The DHS directive converts that argument from political rhetoric into operational policy.
Critics of strict election enforcement have long argued that noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare and that aggressive enforcement risks chilling legitimate voter participation. But the administration’s position, backed by the Percival letter, is that even a small number of illegal votes dilutes the franchise of every lawful citizen who casts a ballot. The recent prosecutions suggest the number is not zero.
Broader questions about government accountability continue to surface across agencies. A former Des Moines school superintendent was recently sentenced to prison on fraud charges, another case where officials entrusted with public responsibility abused that trust.
The Percival letter directs ICE to enforce deportation against illegal immigrants who vote. It cites existing law. It echoes the president’s executive order. And it follows a string of criminal charges against noncitizens caught casting ballots.
What it does not specify, at least in the details made public so far, is which ICE offices or officials received the directive, what additional penalties beyond deportation may apply, or which specific provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act are cited. The full text of the letter has not been released publicly.
The charging documents and case outcomes for Sacko and the four noncitizens charged in May also remain undisclosed. Whether these cases result in convictions and deportations will test whether the new directive has real operational force or remains largely symbolic.
Federal enforcement credibility has taken hits in other areas. Victims of the Butler rally shooting have sued the federal government over Secret Service security failures, a case that highlights the gap between what agencies promise and what they deliver.
The question now is whether ICE will treat the Percival directive as a standing operational priority or a policy memo that gathers dust. The administration has laid the legal groundwork. The prosecutions are underway. The policy manual has been updated. What remains is execution.
For years, Americans were told that noncitizen voting was a myth not worth worrying about. Now DHS is deporting people for it. One of those claims was always wrong, and it wasn’t the one coming from the voters whose ballots were being diluted.
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