DHS Says Preliminary Review Found 256,000-Plus Possible Noncitizen Voter Registrations in Four States

The Department of Homeland Security told election officials in four states this month that its data analysts found what could be a lot of noncitizens on the voter rolls. According to letters obtained by Fox News Digital, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent notices dated Friday to California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania laying out the numbers.

The letters say DHS compared publicly available voter registration records against federal immigration data. The department's preliminary estimate: as many as 190,832 potential noncitizen registrants in California, 35,152 in New Jersey, 15,903 in Nevada and 14,576 in Pennsylvania. That adds up to more than 256,000 across the four states.

DHS also gave a narrower, harder number. The letters say 81,336 California registrants, 19,497 in New Jersey, 8,576 in Nevada and 8,594 in Pennsylvania had names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers that matched noncitizens in federal immigration records. That's the tighter match category, versus the broader estimate of more than 256,000.

DHS itself flags an important caveat: Social Security numbers alone don't prove someone is ineligible to vote. Many noncitizens are legally issued Social Security numbers, including lawful permanent residents, people authorized to work in the United States, and certain visa holders, as the letters acknowledge. DHS said it used Social Security numbers as one of several identifiers in matching voter registration records with federal immigration records. A data match on a Social Security number is not the same as proof someone voted illegally or is even registered improperly. The letters describe the findings as a preliminary review, not a final finding.

What's proven here is that DHS ran a data-matching exercise and got numbers. What's alleged, and unproven, is that those numbers represent actual ineligible registrants rather than false positives from shared identifiers, clerical errors, or naturalized citizens whose immigration status changed after their record was created. Whether the true number holds up depends entirely on the verification process DHS is now asking states to do.

The letters ask the secretaries of state to contact DHS by July 24, so the department can begin sharing immigration records and assisting with the verification process ahead of future federal elections. Mullin argued the stakes are straightforward: "allowing just one non-citizen to vote cancels the vote of one U.S. citizen," he wrote, framing this as a basic election integrity question. Mullin also said "the most efficient way to ensure the accuracy of our findings is to work collaboratively on identity verification," and noted that states maintain voter registration rolls while the federal government maintains the immigration records needed to verify citizenship.

The move follows an earlier DHS directive instructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pursue deportation of illegal immigrants found to have voted in American elections, and a separate warning that the department plans a costlier compliance push against states that don't cooperate on election security reviews.

According to a report from Ground News aggregating coverage, a draft press release viewed by POLITICO described similar findings, putting noncitizen registrations in the same four states, which suggests the numbers were circulating inside the administration before the letters went to state officials. Separate reporting cited by Ground News indicated President Trump was expected to reveal a figure of at least 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote nationally during a primetime speech focused on election security. That figure has not been independently verified in these sources and reflects an expectation of what the speech would say, not a confirmed final DHS tally.

Federal-to-state data matching has a real error rate, election officials in blue and purple states alike have raised in past cycles. Names, birthdates and addresses can collide across large databases. Someone who was a green card holder when a record was created but later naturalized would show up as a "match" even though they're now a citizen entitled to vote. Voter rolls are also maintained by states, not the federal government, and errors in either direction, purging eligible citizens or leaving ineligible registrants on the rolls, carry real costs. That's why DHS is asking for a joint verification process rather than announcing removals unilaterally.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, New Jersey Secretary of State Dale Caldwell and Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital requests for comment, and none of the four states' secretaries of state have publicly confirmed DHS's specific numbers as of this writing. No criminal charges or formal findings of illegal voting have been announced in connection with this review.

The next milestone is the July 24 deadline DHS set for states to begin the verification process. Whether California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania cooperate, and what the tighter verified number turns out to be once individual records are checked against immigration status, will determine whether this becomes a real story about rolls needing cleanup or a data-matching exercise that overstated the problem.