The Trump administration this week warned Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane that election officials could face criminal charges if noncitizens cast ballots in the 2026 federal midterm elections — part of a nationwide campaign by the Justice Department to pressure states on voter roll compliance.

The Warning Letter

A seven-page letter from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, cited federal law prohibiting election officials from interfering with residents’ right to a fair election. The letter warned that knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote could constitute a federal crime.

Dhillon’s letter quoted the statute directly, noting it “makes it a crime for ‘an election official’ in a federal election to ‘knowingly and willfully’ deprive … defraud … or attempt to deprive or defraud the residents of a State.”

The Justice Department sent similar letters to all 50 states this week. The Idaho letter, however, made no mention of steps McGrane and Gov. Brad Little have already taken on the issue.

Idaho’s Existing Noncitizen Enforcement Record

The warning arrives despite Idaho having already conducted a citizenship audit of its roughly one million registered voters. A state election official flagged approximately 30 possible noncitizens following that review. Idaho State Police then referred about a dozen of those cases to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for potential prosecution.

To date, no one identified through that audit has been prosecuted. Idaho voters also approved a constitutional amendment in 2024 explicitly barring noncitizens from voting in state elections, and McGrane issued an executive order alongside Little that same year directing a purge of noncitizens from the voter rolls.

The Justice Department letter did not acknowledge any of those efforts.

The Voter Data Dispute

Central to the standoff is a separate but related legal fight over voter data. McGrane, a Republican, has refused to give the Justice Department access to Idaho’s voter file, which includes partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license information for all registered voters in the state.

The Trump administration has filed suit against 30 states seeking access to voter rolls. The Idaho case has been placed on hold while the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals considers similar disputes from Oregon and California — cases the Justice Department lost at the district level. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill approved the pause in the Idaho case on May 21. As of late last month, no court had yet ruled in the administration’s favor on voter roll access.

McGrane’s office declined to comment publicly and said it had not yet responded to the letter, which arrived Tuesday.

Questions About Scale

Legal experts have raised questions about whether the administration’s warnings reflect the actual scope of the problem. University of Idaho law professor Benjamin Cover examined federal noncitizen voting cases and found only about two dozen prosecutions nationwide since President Trump took office in January 2025 — none of them in Idaho.

“If it really was happening at a huge scale, like some have suggested,” Cover said, “you’d expect to see a lot of prosecutions, right?”

The limited prosecution record stands in contrast to the administration’s rhetoric, which has cited noncitizen voting as a significant threat to election integrity. Republican-led election reforms in Idaho and elsewhere have been framed around protecting the integrity of the vote, while critics argue the enforcement posture goes beyond what the evidence supports.

What Comes Next

The outcome of the 9th Circuit cases in Oregon and California will likely determine whether the Justice Department can compel Idaho and other holdout states to turn over voter roll data. If the appeals court sides with the administration, McGrane could face renewed pressure to comply or risk further legal action.

The criminal prosecution threat adds a new dimension to that pressure, though it remains unclear whether the Justice Department intends the warning as a legal commitment or a political signal ahead of the November midterms.

Idaho’s congressional delegation and state Republicans have broadly supported the administration’s election integrity push, though questions about campaign finance transparency in Idaho elections have also drawn attention from state watchdog groups this cycle.