Vote Illegally, Get Deported: DHS Orders ICE to Remove Noncitizens Who Cast Ballots. No Conviction Required.

The Department of Homeland Security on June 9, 2026 directed ICE to seek the deportation of noncitizens who vote in American elections — invoking removal grounds that have sat in the Immigration and Nationality Act for decades but have rarely been the basis of an enforcement priority. The directive came in a letter from DHS General Counsel James Percival to ICE leadership, implementing President Donald Trump’s (R) March 2025 election-integrity executive order.

The two sharpest edges of the policy are easy to miss. A criminal conviction is not required — the INA’s unlawful-voting ground is a civil removability provision, so ICE attorneys can pursue deportation without a prosecutor ever charging the underlying vote. And it reaches aliens who are in the country legally: a green-card holder who casts a ballot is just as removable under the provisions the directive activates.

“Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy,” Percival wrote. “It must have consequences.” The directive landed the day after the DOJ moved to denaturalize 17 naturalized citizens, days after a New Jersey GOP probe reported hundreds of noncitizens on that state’s rolls — and five months before the midterms.

• 0 convictions — needed — the INA's unlawful-voting ground is civil removability, invocable without a criminal case · Source: DHS release, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(6)
• 7 elections — what ICE says Mahady Sacko — ordered removed in 2000 — voted in between 2008 and 2024 before his March arrest in Philadelphia · Source: DHS, Washington Examiner
• ~24,000 — potential noncitizens flagged on state voter rolls by DHS's revamped SAVE system as of April 2026 — a screening figure, not a count of illegal votes · Source: DHS via press reports
• 29 states + DC — sued by the DOJ for voter-roll data in the administration's parallel election-integrity campaign · Source: DOJ, State Democracy Research Initiative

The June 9 letter directs ICE’s attorneys and officers to prioritize removal proceedings against aliens who registered or voted in violation of law, under two existing INA grounds: unlawful voting under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(6), and false claims of U.S. citizenship under § 1227(a)(3)(D) — provisions DHS says “go hand-in-hand,” since registering to vote almost always requires attesting citizenship. It is the enforcement-side completion of a pipeline the administration has been assembling since Executive Order 14248: the SAVE system screens state rolls for noncitizens, the DOJ sues states that won’t hand over their rolls, and now ICE removes the people the screen catches.

The chain of command behind it has turned over completely this spring: the directive was issued under DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R), the former Oklahoma senator confirmed in March after Trump fired Kristi Noem (R), and lands at an ICE now run by acting director Dave Venturella, who took over June 1. Percival, the general counsel, had already ordered ICE’s legal office in a May 26 memo to build “anti-fraud policies” for “robust enforcement” — the June 9 letter is that memo with teeth.

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Nothing in the directive creates new law — that is both its strength and the tell about decades of non-enforcement. Voting by aliens in federal elections has been a federal crime since 1996 under 18 U.S.C. § 611, punishable by up to a year in prison. Falsely claiming citizenship to register carries up to five years. And the INA has made unlawful voting a deportable offense all along. What changed on June 9 is prioritization: removal cases that U.S. Attorneys and ICE trial attorneys once treated as afterthoughts are now a directed enforcement lane, with no need to wait for a conviction that may never come.

The directive’s reach into the legally-present population is the part immigration lawyers will fight hardest. A lawful permanent resident five years into the citizenship track who checked the wrong box at the DMV — a genuine pattern in past cases — is removable under the same provision as a visa overstayer who voted deliberately. DHS’s release does not distinguish; the case law eventually will. USCIS already bars naturalization for green-card holders who registered or voted, under an August 2025 policy update.

“Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy. It must have consequences.”

James Percival · DHS General Counsel · June 9, 2026

The administration has been stockpiling exhibits. Mahady Sacko, a 50-year-old Mauritanian national ordered removed in June 2000, was arrested by ICE in Philadelphia in March — charged with voting in seven federal elections since 2008, including both the primary and general in 2016 and 2020. He is charged, not convicted, and presumed innocent. In New Jersey, four green-card holders — from Liberia, Israel, Jamaica, and India — were charged in May with voting across the 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2024 cycles; they too await trial. Jose Ceballos, a Mexican green-card holder, pleaded guilty in April to voter fraud and falsely claiming citizenship — a conviction, and now a removal case.

Then there are the rolls themselves. A New Jersey GOP review of all 21 counties reported hundreds of noncitizens registered and at least 30 documented illegal votes — most of the registrants, the party said, registered as Democrats. The Daily Signal counted seven states reporting noncitizen registrations this spring. And DHS says its revamped SAVE screen has flagged roughly 24,000 potential noncitizens on state voter rolls — with the crucial caveat that SAVE flags have also swept in U.S. citizens whose naturalization postdates their last DMV record, which is why “flagged” and “guilty” are different words.

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Here is the part a credible accountability site owes its readers: the documented case counts are small, and the directive’s significance is the mechanism, not the volume. The Heritage Foundation’s election-fraud database — the most aggressive public tally — records 1,546 proven fraud instances of all kinds across decades; analysts who pulled the noncitizen-voting subset count 68 documented cases since the 1980s (the Cato Institute counts 24 between 2003 and 2023). A Georgia audit of 8.2 million registered voters found 20 noncitizen registrations and 9 ballots actually cast.

The administration’s counter is that small counts reflect non-enforcement, not non-occurrence: nobody was looking, nobody was charging, and a voting system that never checks citizenship will never find noncitizen voters. Sacko allegedly voted for sixteen years aftera removal order; nothing caught him until an administration went looking. Both things can be true — documented cases are rare, and the deterrent had been zero. The directive is built on the second truth; its critics will litigate the first.

No lawsuit had been filed against the directive as of June 10 — it was a day old — but the battle lines are pre-drawn. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D)signed an executive order in May restricting federal agents’ access to polling places, schools, and hospitals on state property — a move that split her own party’s legislators. A federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s suit for California’s voter data in January. And DHS’s parallel hunt for naturalized citizens who voted before naturalizing — revealed in an HSI memo this winter — drew “not normal” from two of the department’s own current and former officials, who fear a chilling effect on lawful voters ahead of the midterms.

The funding fight, at least, is settled: after congressional Democrats blocked ICE and Border Patrol appropriations for 115 days — including a record 75-day Department of Homeland Security shutdown — Republicans funded the agencies by reconciliation anyway, and ICE entered mid-2026 with the largest enforcement budget in its history. A directive like this one is therefore not an aspiration but an operational plan: the agency has the attorneys, the detention capacity, and now the priority list.

For thirty years, the rule on the books said a noncitizen who votes commits a federal crime and forfeits the right to stay; for thirty years, the operational rule said nobody checks. The June 9 directive ends the second rule and dares the courts to defend the gap. If you believe documented cases are vanishingly rare, the directive is a heavy instrument aimed at a light problem — with lawful residents likely to be caught in the gears. If you believe the case counts are an artifact of willful blindness, it is the first time the law has been allowed to mean what it says.

Either way, the operative sentence is Percival’s: it must have consequences. Starting June 9, it does. We will update this page when the first removal cases — and the first legal challenges — land.

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Last updated June 10, 2026