According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the federal government decided to only go after 35 criminal cases of aliens voting in American elections from 2001 to 2021 — the latest year for which data is available.
The suspiciously low number of prosecutions contrasts with thousands thousands of aliens having been registered to vote in recent years, and at least hundreds being flagged to the Justice Department as having actually cast a ballot. This calls into question the political motivations of those responsible for upholding federal election laws.
“I spent four years at the Justice Department as a career lawyer, and I can tell you that the career ranks of the Justice Department are filled with left-wing ideologues, and they just had no interest — they have no interest in going after aliens to prosecute them,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation, told The Federalist in an interview.
“They think it is unfair that aliens can’t register and vote. Plus, many of them thought, ‘Well, if they’re registering and voting, it will help our side,” von Spakovsky continued. “I think that’s clearly the motivation here. That’s why they weren’t interested in pursuing these cases.”
Screenshot of Bureau of Justice Statistics database showing 35 prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. 611: Voting by Aliens from 2001 to 2021.
Von Spakovsky spoke about his experience as an election official in Fairfax County, Virginia, where his oversight in 2011 discovered nearly 300 aliens on the voter rolls
