Have illegal immigrants voted in the us
Executive summary
Yes — there are documented instances in which noncitizens (including unauthorized immigrants) have been found to have registered or cast ballots in U.S. elections, but independent audits and government reviews show those cases are vanishingly rare and do not support claims of widespread illegal voting by immigrants [1] [2].
1. The factual record: isolated prosecutions and confirmed cases
Federal law and criminal investigations have produced concrete prosecutions of noncitizens for illegal voting — for example, ICE announced indictments charging 19 foreign nationals with unlawfully voting in the 2016 elections and other press releases document individual arrests and convictions such as the Maria Azada case alleging multiple illegal ballots [3] [4] [5]. Conservative databases assembled by groups such as the Heritage Foundation have compiled a small number of proven instances over decades, and advocates who scrutinize that same evidence conclude the raw counts remain minimal [6] [1].
2. How common is it? The evidence says “extremely rare.”
Multiple audit-style studies and reporting across nonpartisan and academic sources find that noncitizen voting is an extremely small fraction of ballots: the Brennan Center’s reviews and a study of jurisdictions found only a handful of suspected noncitizen votes among millions cast, Heritage’s database identifies only a few dozen proven cases across long time spans, and Migration Policy’s explainer emphasizes that audits and research show noncitizen voting is not significant in number [7] [6] [1]. Recent federal reviews using DHS verification tools flagged about 10,000 names for follow-up out of roughly 49.5 million registrations checked, representing roughly 0.02 percent of the records screened — and officials cautioned many of those flags are errors that require local verification [8].
3. Why the numbers stay small: legal risks and verification systems
Noncitizens who register or vote face severe legal and immigration penalties, including criminal prosecution and potential deportation, which acts as a deterrent, and many states have data-matching and verification processes intended to exclude ineligible registrants; these institutional and legal barriers are a steady theme in analyses explaining why large-scale illegal voting by immigrants is implausible [1] [7].
4. Mistakes, glitches, and administrative confusion often explain apparent incidents
A substantial share of identified “noncitizen” registrations turns out to be administrative error — for example, driver’s license or motor-voter systems have in some states mistakenly presented the option to register to noncitizens, and matching across sprawling immigration databases can create false positives that require local investigation [2] [9]. State audits that initially report suspicious records routinely find that many flagged names belong to citizens or reflected registration mistakes rather than deliberate illegal voting [8] [2].
5. Political context: weaponization of rare cases and the misinformation risk
Claims that “millions” of illegal immigrants voted in U.S. elections lack evidentiary support in the public record; nevertheless, political actors and advocacy groups have amplified isolated cases and database hits to argue for broad voter-ID or citizenship-proof rules — a strategy critics say risks disenfranchising eligible voters and stoking fear, with partisan lawsuits and federal requests for voter lists intensifying those dynamics [9] [10]. Independent observers and academic commentators warn that exaggerating rare incidents serves political aims and can chill participation among immigrant communities [11] [10].
6. Limitations and open questions
Available reporting provides quantified counts for prosecutions and database flags but cannot prove the precise number of noncitizens who actually cast ballots in every election; federal referrals and state reviews require local follow-up, and reporting notes that many flagged cases end up being resolved in favor of citizenship or administrative error — a limitation that means absolute certainty about every individual case is unattainable from current public sources [8] [2].
Conclusion: direct answer
There is incontrovertible evidence that some noncitizens have illegally registered or voted in U.S. elections — documented prosecutions and verified cases exist — but the scale of such occurrences is extremely small relative to the electorate, and multiple audits, academic analyses, and federal reviews show no evidence of widespread or systemic illegal voting by immigrants [3] [1] [8].