In mid-July 2026, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that more than 250,000 noncitizens are registered to vote across four states: 190,832 in California, 35,152 in New Jersey, 15,903 in Nevada, and 14,576 in Pennsylvania. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin promoted the figures.
The numbers did not survive contact with the facts. Snopes rated the claim false, finding “zero evidence” to support it. PolitiFact noted the figures are preliminary counts that are typically reduced drastically after vetting. The states rebutted them directly: New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said a 2023-24 software error had inadvertently registered about 6,600 noncitizens, a fraction of the 35,000 DHS claimed, and that those registrants cast fewer than 400 ballots total statewide. Nevada told the New York Times that only 138 of its 2.1 million active voters had not provided a driver's license or Social Security number when registering.
The gap between 250,000 and the vetted reality is the point. DHS's preliminary flags, drawn from imperfect database matches, become a headline number that the administration uses to justify federal intervention in state elections, from the mail-voting order to the funding conditions, while the actual, evidence-based counts are trivially small. This is the manufacture of a fraud narrative out of database noise (see The Homeland Security Secretary Says He'd 'Throw Out the Constitution' to Stop Noncitizen Voting, Then Walks It Back and The Administration Turned an Immigration Database Into a Voter Citizenship Checker. A Judge Vacated It, and the Supreme Court Put It Back.).
Update (September 17, 2026): the vetted numbers keep shrinking. NPR reported in August that on a recorded call, DHS called its roughly 16,000 figure for Nevada “the ceiling,” then sent a list of 185 voter IDs it was confident about. Nevada deputy secretary of state Mark Wlaschin said, “We are unable to conduct an analysis without real verifiable information.” In Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin that DHS staff “did not have high confidence” in their figure of 14,576 flagged registrants, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In a September 9 email obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA, DHS said its immigration fraud unit matched Pennsylvania's public voter roll against DHS databases using names, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, not Social Security numbers, though in July it had told the state that Social Security numbers were used in some matches. “Each one of the 14,576 individuals identified should be carefully reviewed by your state to determine eligibility,” DHS wrote, calling Schmidt's account a mischaracterization. A Pennsylvania Department of State spokesman said, “Voters can be confident that eligible Pennsylvania citizens will not be disenfranchised by faulty methodology or unreliable data.”
Update (September 24, 2026): Nevada says the 185 were citizens, as far as its records can show. In a letter to DHS obtained by the Nevada Independent and the New York Times, Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote that “our records indicate that they were citizens” and “You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.” State election officials checked each flagged voter's registration record, including the type of ID used to register, and found no evidence that any was a noncitizen.
Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar acknowledged the limit of that check: because DHS identified the voters only by number, the state cannot be fully certain both sides are looking at the same people. DHS disputed the state's account, saying the 185 were a subset that had been manually reviewed. “Our records do not support DHS's claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” Aguilar said. DHS has meanwhile directed its investigators in Nevada and eight other states to pursue suspected noncitizen voting, including through field interviews (see DHS Launched a Nine-State Voter Fraud Surge With Field Interviews as Early Voting Opened).
Update (September 28, 2026): more of the Nevada record has come out. Besides the 185 voter numbers, DHS sent another 6,218 records that had not gone through the same review, Democracy Docket and FOX5 Las Vegas reported. When Nevada asked for names, birth dates and addresses so it could check them, a DHS official, Kimberley Vogt, replied that the department would “prefer to limit our information sharing to just providing you the voter ID from your public voter list.” DHS has never given Nevada the full list of 15,903. In a follow-up email reported by the New York Times, Vogt wrote, “I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185… We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens.” Meanwhile Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, posted that “Nevada rightfully took non-citizens off their voter rolls”; Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told the Nevada Independent the state has done only routine list maintenance, not removals aimed at noncitizens. Aguilar: “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.”
Update (October 1, 2026): two watchdog groups have sued for the evidence. American Oversight filed suit in federal court in Washington on September 30 after DHS produced no records in response to August requests for the data behind the 250,000 figure and the talking points for Secretary Mullin's statement; CREW sued DHS and USCIS on September 29. Chioma Chukwu of American Oversight: “If DHS has evidence to back up its claims, it should show the American people the receipts.” The Hill reported that DHS's letters to the four states said its “preliminary review” had matched about 118,000 names, less than half the public figure, and American Oversight noted the letters said only that there “may be as many as” 250,000.