Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated Friday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has preliminarily determined that more than 250,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in four states: California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
Federal Demands and State Resistance
The claims follow a primetime address to the nation by President Trump on Thursday focusing on election security. Secretary Mullin informed reporters that the four mentioned states have not complied with administration demands to provide voter data to the federal government. In response, the Justice Department has sued dozens of states to obtain their voter rolls.
Mullin has threatened state election officials with fines, penalties, and possible prison time if they refuse to hand over sensitive voter data or fail to use DHS methods to identify non-citizens on voter rolls. He also stated that states failing to cooperate would be unable to access federal grants and would become a “priority” for investigations.
Additionally, Mullin noted that 23 states are currently working with the administration. After running voter records through an overhauled centralized federal database, an additional 28,000 non-citizens were found to be registered to vote in those states.
Methodology and Accuracy Concerns
The administration has not made its full methodology public, but a White House official told reporters the estimate of 250,000 non-citizens was based on an analysis of commercial databases. Experts and legal challenges have questioned the reliability of this approach:
For more on this story, see DOJ Warns States of Criminal Charges for Noncitizen Voter Violations.
- Commercial Data: David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told CBS News that using commercial databases likely leads to false positives and significantly overestimates non-citizens on rolls, potentially including a majority of eligible voters.
- DHS Database: A federal judge has blocked the use of the DHS database for this purpose, ruling that repurposing the system—which was historically used for immigration benefits—violated rules regarding the disclosure of Social Security records.
- Error Rates: The database has been described as error-prone, frequently flagging newly naturalized citizens as non-citizens.
The Center for Election Innovation and Research stated that confirmed cases of non-citizens voting are exceedingly rare
and that such allegations often stem from misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications.
This follows our earlier report, Trump DHS Uses Unverified Data to Target Election Officials Over Non-Citizen Voting.
Statistical Context of the Claims
Neither President Trump nor Secretary Mullin stated that the 250,000 alleged non-citizens actually cast ballots.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Percentage of all nationwide registered voters (2024) | Roughly 0.1% |
| Percentage of registered voters in the 4 specific states (2024) | 0.6% (of nearly 40 million) |
| Total active registered voters (2020) | More than 209 million |
| Total active registered voters (2024) | More than 211 million |
Broader Election Security Efforts
These claims arrive months before the November midterm elections. President Trump has signed two executive orders—which have been blocked by courts—that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections and tighten mail-in ballot rules. He has also pressured Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, requiring photo ID and in-person proof of citizenship for registration.
Read also: Trump Says He Overruled Plan to Cancel Celebration After Storm.
Other recent federal actions include the firing of dozens of employees from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the dismissal of the leadership of the U.S. In January, the FBI raided an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized ballots.
Secretary Mullin stated that DHS will continue scrubbing election records for ineligible votes from non-citizens and deceased individuals both before and after the midterms. He maintained that these efforts are not about rehashing the 2020 election
but are intended to ensure the American people trust the voting system.
Worth a look