After years of claiming widespread illegal voting across the country, the Trump administration is now putting in the legwork to try to prove it.
Rice University political expert Mark Jones said the Department of Justice has already requested that states turn over their unredacted voter rolls to determine whether non-citizens are voting.
Texas is one of the states that didn't fight the federal request.
"When the Texas Secretary of State sent the unredacted voter files to the Department of Justice, those contained most of the information about the voter, but they did not contain the original application for voter registration that was filled out by the voter," Jones said.
Jones said to obtain those voter registration applications and potentially uncover crime, the Department of Homeland Security must subpoena the counties.
ABC13 has reached out to the surrounding counties and heard back from both Liberty and Brazoria, who confirm that last week they were contacted by the federal government.
"The crime that a non-citizen would have committed is filling out that voter registration application and attesting that they were a citizen, while not actually being a citizen," Jones said.
If the federal government believes a non-citizen registered to vote, Jones said a criminal investigation could be launched.
According to Brazoria County elections director Lisa Mujica, DHS did ask them for voter registration applications.
Jones said checks and balances are already in place to ensure voters are citizens. And while there may be a small number of non-citizens registered across the country, Jones said the majority of red flags identified by the federal government may be clerical errors.
"When someone is a naturalized citizen, but at some time federal records showed them not being naturalized, that could create some sort of dissonance," Jones said.
Jones said these kinds of requests were not typical under other administrations. And while the Harris County elections office said as of now they are not subpoenaed, Jones said he's pretty sure it's coming.
ABC13 reached out to DHS, which said they cannot comment on active investigations but are committed to rooting out voter fraud.