For years, Donald Trump has portrayed noncitizen voting as a massive threat to American elections, claiming at various times that hundreds of thousands or even millions of illegal votes have been cast.

Now his administration is trying to prove it.

But the numbers emerging from the federal government's own enforcement campaign tell a much smaller story.

The Department of Justice announced a series of September prosecutions involving people accused of illegal voting, unlawful voter registration, and related election offenses. WhoWhatWhy counted 25 defendants in three September announcements and noted that some of those cases involved lawful permanent residents rather than undocumented immigrants.

Those cases matter. Noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, and people who knowingly violate that law can face serious criminal and immigration consequences.

What the cases have not demonstrated is widespread noncitizen voting.

That distinction has become increasingly important as the Trump administration uses individual prosecutions to support its broader claims about election fraud.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently said the government had 1,620 cases under investigation, 151 arrests and roughly 300,000 additional cases under review. He argued that the numbers vindicated Trump's longstanding claims about election fraud.

But an investigation is not proof that an illegal vote was cast. Neither is a database match, and an arrest is not a conviction.

Independent examinations of the administration's claims have repeatedly found that noncitizen voting occurs but is rare.

PolitiFact examined an earlier Trump administration claim that approximately 250,000 noncitizens had been found on voter rolls. Its review concluded that years of available evidence show noncitizen voting to be a statistical rarity and found no evidence that it has affected election outcomes.

Even Republican-controlled states looking specifically for the problem have sometimes produced remarkably small numbers. A Utah review, for example, identified only one confirmed noncitizen on the voter rolls — and that individual had never voted.

THE DATABASE PROBLEM

Complicating the administration's effort is its reliance on the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program.

The system was originally designed to help government agencies verify immigration status for determining eligibility for public benefits. Its expanding use for voter eligibility has generated controversy because citizenship information can be incomplete or outdated.

FactCheck.org reported that the federal tool had incorrectly flagged U.S. citizens as possible noncitizens. The organization found no evidence supporting claims of widespread noncitizen voting.

That creates an important distinction that can disappear in political rhetoric: being flagged by a database is not the same thing as illegally casting a ballot.

THE PUSH FOR THE SAVE AMERICA ACT

The voter-fraud campaign is also tied to Trump's push for the SAVE America Act.

The legislation would impose new nationwide requirements for proving citizenship when registering to vote and require photo identification when voting. Supporters say the additional safeguards are necessary to ensure that only American citizens participate in federal elections.

Critics argue that the requirements could create new obstacles for eligible American voters who do not have ready access to passports, certified birth certificates or other qualifying citizenship documents.

A 2023 survey cited by FactCheck.org estimated that about 21.3 million voting-age Americans could not quickly locate documentary proof of citizenship if required to produce it immediately. That does not mean all of those people would ultimately be prevented from voting — many could obtain the necessary documents — but election experts say the requirements could create significant barriers for some eligible voters.

Meanwhile, the underlying premise remains disputed by the available evidence.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, while describing the goal of ensuring that only citizens vote as important, concluded that instances of noncitizen registration and voting are rare and argued that citizenship verification could be improved without creating additional barriers for eligible voters.

A FEW CASES ARE NOT MILLIONS

None of this means voter fraud never occurs.

It does.

People occasionally vote when they are not eligible, vote more than once, cast ballots belonging to relatives or commit other election-related crimes. Those cases should be investigated and prosecuted when supported by evidence.

But the political argument surrounding the issue isn't really about whether one person somewhere has ever voted illegally.

The question is whether noncitizen voting occurs on anything approaching the enormous scale Trump and his allies have repeatedly suggested.

So far, the administration's own crackdown has not demonstrated that.

Instead, after years of warnings about an election system supposedly overwhelmed by illegal voters, federal officials are highlighting individual indictments scattered across a nation where more than 150 million ballots were cast in the 2024 presidential election.

The prosecutions demonstrate that illegal voting can happen.

They have yet to demonstrate the epidemic the administration says it is fighting.