President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserted on Thursday that they have identified a significant number of noncitizens registered to vote in four states, yet they provided no evidence or detailed explanation of their investigative methods.
Election officials in Nevada immediately dismissed the allegations concerning noncitizen presence on their voter rolls.
Unverified claims regarding noncitizen voting have been a cornerstone of the president’s political rhetoric and a primary justification for the SAVE America Act—federal legislation that Democrats argue is designed to provide a partisan advantage to Republicans.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump intensified these assertions, claiming the DHS identified “approximately 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.” This statement aligns with a White House document released Thursday from the DHS, which claims to have found over 250,000 noncitizens registered in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
The document failed to provide specific details regarding its methodology. Furthermore, it noted that the four states in question do not utilize the SAVE system—a DHS-administered resource used to verify citizenship status. Because these states do not participate in that program, it remains unclear how the DHS arrived at such a high figure using only public voter files.
Data released Thursday by the Nevada Secretary of State’s office revealed that out of 2.1 million active voters, only 138 did not provide a state driver’s license or Social Security number upon registration. This data suggests that identifying potential noncitizens would be straightforward; however, Nevada officials reported no evidence of widespread noncitizen registration. The 138 individuals identified may have utilized other valid forms of identification, such as tribal IDs.
The DHS document further claimed that all four states “have been notified of this serious threat to national security.” However, Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic Secretary of State in Nevada, stated he has received no recent notifications from the DHS regarding this matter.
Al Schmidt, the Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth in Pennsylvania, issued a statement outlining the rigorous verification steps required for voters to cast a ballot.
“Pennsylvania complies with all state and federal laws regarding our elections, and our voter rolls are properly maintained and updated,” Mr. Schmidt stated. He added: “All evidence demonstrates that noncitizen voting is extremely rare nationwide, including in Pennsylvania. While the Department has stated we cannot share the private, personal information of Pennsylvanians, we welcome the DHS to share its methodology and list of potential ineligible voters so we can thoroughly review the validity of these claims.”
Representatives for the secretaries of state in California and New Jersey did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Historically, Republican state officials seeking to highlight noncitizen voting have frequently released inflated figures that were later significantly revised downward.
The SAVE system has also been known to erroneously flag U.S. citizens as noncitizens in several states that employ the tool for voter roll audits.
For instance, Iowa recently revised an initial estimate of over 2,100 potential noncitizens on its voter rolls to just 277 following further review. Of those, only 35 noncitizens cast ballots in the 2024 general election out of more than 1.6 million total ballots cast across the state.
The Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, recently observed that “claims of large numbers of possible noncitizens on voter records are revised significantly downward after proper investigation and scrutiny.”
The DHS’s latest analysis appears to fall into a known trap: relying on publicly available state voter records that have been redacted for privacy, removing critical identifying information such as driver’s license numbers. The tendency to inflate numbers due to these limitations is well-documented. In fact, the administration has used this issue to pursue initiatives aimed at compelling Democratically-led states to hand over unredacted voter records—a move states have opposed to protect voter privacy and comply with state laws.
In a court filing submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals in April regarding a similar case involving California, Department of Justice attorneys explained that the request for driver’s license numbers was intended to “distinguish duplicate names that are not otherwise easily identifiable.”
