Ahead of Trump Speech, DHS Says it Found Thousands of Noncitizens on Voter Rolls
By JOHN SAKELLARIADIS and MAGGIE MILLER
A draft press release viewed by POLITICO said noncitizens were registered in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says his agency found thousands of noncitizens on voter rolls in California and three other states as President Donald Trump prepared to renew his focus on election security with a speech to the nation.
DHS said a preliminary review uncovered tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls in New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania, and nearly two hundred thousand in California, according to a draft press release viewed Thursday by POLITICO.
The press release, which did not say whether there was any evidence of actual voting by noncitizens or explain how DHS reached its finding, was circulated inside the agency ahead of Trump’s planned prime time speech in which he had promised to reveal “really big news” on election security.
It is also not clear how DHS obtained the data. While some voter registration records are publicly available, the Trump Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states across the U.S. for this type of data. All 15 judges who have ruled on those cases so far have rejected the requests as overly broad and without a clear purpose.
Asked for comment on the DHS press release, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office referred to a statement on social media in which he noted that Trump has repeatedly made false claims about elections.
“California law is clear: You MUST be a U.S. citizen to vote state and federal elections,” Newsom said on X. “Voter fraud is EXTREMELY RARE — and almost always committed by U.S. citizens.”
Democrats and state elections officials are bracing for the possibility that Trump will use the speech to advance his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen amid reports the White House is weighing the declassification of intelligence on vulnerabilities in U.S. voting infrastructure, and Chinese influence peddling in 2020.
The draft press release states that “reviews of the four states’ records” found 190,832 noncitizens registered in California; 35,152 in New Jersey; 15,903 in Nevada; and 14,576 in Pennsylvania. It does not indicate that DHS found evidence that noncitizens cast ballots or explain how it reached a number that appears to be higher than previous reviews have found.
A federal judge recently found that the citizenship database created by DHS erroneously classified U.S. citizens in a large number of cases as ineligible voters.
The draft press release makes reference to letters Mullin plans to send to each of the four states. Those letters will ask the top elections officials in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California and Nevada to “respond within two weeks and confirm their intentions to collaborate with DHS in order to ensure free, fair and accurate elections.”
Spokespeople for the secretaries of state for Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania — the top election officials in each state — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
California’s Secretary of State has pursued a legal challenge of the Department of Justice demand for statewide voter registration and has not turned over any of the information, said a spokesperson for the office Dedee Verdin. Los Angeles County, the largest in the state, also said it had not turned over any information to the state.
California Democratic Assemblymember Marc Berman, the author of several state election laws, said in a statement that DHS should focus on Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.
“If Secretary Mullin wants to investigate voter fraud in America, I suggest he start with his boss,” Berman said. “The only person who has been caught demanding that elections officials make up thousands of votes is President Donald J. Trump, who begged the Georgia Secretary of State to ‘find 11,780 votes’ to steal the 2020 presidential election.”
Spokespeople for the White House and DHS also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and cases in which noncitizens vote are extremely rare. Many suspected noncitizens identified on state voter rolls have turned out to be false-positives.
The preliminary finding from DHS and potential outreach to the states also comes amid a push by Trump to assert greater federal control over elections.
In recent weeks, Trump has berated Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide photo ID and proof of citizenship when they show up to the polls. Republicans in the Senate have signaled the bill, which would also clampdown on mail-in voting, does not have the votes to pass.
Last week, Trump fired the full leadership of the Election Assistance Commission, an independent federal agency that acts as a clearinghouse for best practices on administering elections. The commission also certifies the security of commonly used voting machines and doles out federal election security funds to states.
A declassified review from Trump’s own intelligence community concluded that no foreign adversary altered or even attempted to alter votes in 2020. It also found with high confidence that China “considered but did not deploy” any attempts to influence voter perceptions that year, though it noted some internal disagreement about whether Beijing might have mounted an anti-Trump influence campaign.
