Trump Administration Widens Immigration Enforcement: Welfare Reporting Rules, Voter Fraud Charges, and Deputized State Troopers

Welfare reporting: comply or lose funding

The Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel issued a new opinion, obtained by The Daily Wire, ordering every state agency, not just welfare offices, to report illegal immigrants receiving benefits under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). States that refuse risk losing federal funding.

The opinion withdraws a 1998 OLC opinion that limited the reporting requirement to the specific agencies administering the benefits. Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser said Congress "wrote this requirement plainly" and that welfare dollars "should not perversely encourage illegal entry." Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock, who authored the opinion, said the change "does not impose new obligations on states" but "restores the original meaning of the statute."

All 50 states, Washington D.C., and several territories participate in TANF, meaning the new interpretation could touch every state government in the country if litigation over the reversal doesn't stop it first.

Voter fraud sweep hits three states

Separately, the Justice Department announced charges against five people, including two illegal immigrants and two non-citizens with legal status, for unlawfully casting ballots, falsifying citizenship status, and fraudulently registering to vote during the 2022 and 2024 elections, according to Fox News. The cases span Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.

Fox News obtained footage of the arrest of Katya Rodriguez, 30, an illegal immigrant from Mexico living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A federal grand jury indicted her on charges tied to voting as an alien in the 2024 election, including providing a false citizenship statement to register. She faces up to 11 years in prison plus supervised release and fines, according to a DOJ press release.

The arrests are part of a broader push in which the Justice Department has sued nearly 30 states to obtain confidential voter rolls, while Homeland Security Investigations, an agency historically focused on cartels and terrorism, has been redirected toward hunting unlawfully registered non-citizens. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital that "the evidence of non-citizens registering to vote in our elections continues to pile up" and that "any non-citizens found registering to vote and voting in our elections will be held accountable."

Troopers as federal immigration agents

The enforcement expansion isn't limited to DOJ paperwork. State troopers are now doing frontline immigration work under Section 287(g) of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act, which lets Homeland Security deputize state and local officers with ICE providing training and supervision.

The program was small for years. ICE figures showed roughly 30 active agreements when President Biden left office in January 2025. Under the Trump administration it expanded fast: Florida Highway Patrol became the first state highway patrol in the country to sign a 287(g) task force agreement in February 2025, and by mid-2025 ICE reported more than 600 agreements nationwide covering state troopers, sheriffs, and municipal departments.

Congress backed the shift when Trump signed the Laken Riley Act in January 2025, requiring detention of unauthorized migrants charged with certain theft and violent offenses. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has told Congress the era of "catch and release" is over.

The cost of scaling up: a citizen deported by mistake

The expansion has a documented failure mode. Brian José Morales García, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen from Austin, was working a construction crew installing air conditioners near Fredericksburg, Texas, when a Texas Department of Public Safety officer pulled the crew over. He was removed from the country despite his citizenship, according to The Texas Tribune (via Raw Story). He spent four months in Mexico before the federal government agreed to let him back in, while a civil rights lawsuit over his detention continues in court.

State Sen. Charles Schwertner, the Georgetown Republican who carried Texas's law requiring nearly every sheriff to partner with federal immigration authorities by December 1, acknowledged when the bill was debated that "there are obviously inherent biases of individuals" in response to a Democratic lawmaker's concern about racial profiling, while maintaining there are ways to properly train officers.

The Texas Tribune reports the apprehension, detention, and removal of U.S. citizens by immigration authorities is rare. But immigration legal scholars quoted by the outlet say incidents like Morales's are likely to become more common as local police agreements multiply into the hundreds nationwide.

What's unresolved

The welfare-reporting opinion and the 287(g) expansion both rest on legal authority that hasn't been fully tested in court. States facing the loss of TANF and SSI funding over non-compliance could sue, as could plaintiffs in Morales's ongoing civil rights case, which will test how much liability attaches when a state trooper's traffic stop cascades into a wrongful deportation of an American citizen.