Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Markwayne Mullin pressed state election officials on Friday to “scrub” their voter rolls and take different steps to replace election safety methods, alleging that a whole lot of 1000’s of non-citizens are registered to vote throughout the U.S. — 250,000 of which the company claimed got here from 4 states.
DHS is now pushing states to make use of the expanded SAVE System — a instrument maintained by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Companies initially supposed to find out eligibility for presidency advantages — to evaluate their voter rolls, in line with a DHS report launched by the White Home on Thursday night time.
Homeland Safety Secretary Markwayne Mullin speaks within the Indian Treaty Room on the Eisenhower Government Workplace Constructing on the White Home campus, Friday, July 17, 2026, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Picture
However some consultants and state election officers have flagged defective information utilizing the system up to now.
It’s unclear whether or not DHS used the system to tally up the alleged 250,000 non-citizen registered voters throughout 4 states. In his remarks to reporters on Friday, Mullin didn’t clarify precisely how DHS verified its information.
However the company has repeatedly referred to as on states to make use of SAVE to audit their voter rolls. The White Home referred questions in regards to the report back to the DHS. In response to detailed questions in regards to the report, DHS referred again to a Friday social media submit from Mullin.
What’s the SAVE System?
The SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) system will not be a complete document of Americans; it’s a instrument used to go looking collections of federal information and databases to help in verifying immigration and citizenship standing.
Previous to 2025, the system was restricted to querying recognized immigrants, non-citizens and naturalized residents in opposition to DHS information to confirm their standing.
Final yr, the Trump administration expanded the SAVE system to confirm the citizenship standing of all individuals registered to vote — together with natural-born residents.
A voter completes their poll at a voting web site, in New York, Nov. 4, 2025.
Richard Drew/AP Picture, FILE
A core a part of that effort included DHS increasing the flexibility to question the SAVE system utilizing Social Safety numbers and Social Safety Administration (SSA) information, enabling broader, bulk searches of state voter rolls utilizing extra primary demographic data.
Based on a fact sheet on the expanded SAVE system printed by USCIS, which has since been taken down, even the administration acknowledged that “SAVE might not be capable of affirm U.S. citizenship for a person who … will not be designated as a U.S. citizen in SSA information.”
The actual fact sheet famous states should “take extra steps when required by SAVE for any case response apart from ‘United States Citizen,'” earlier than eradicating somebody from the voter rolls.
The administration’s growth of SAVE is at the moment the topic of ongoing litigation, with two federal district courts issuing conflicting rulings this summer season on the legality of the brand new system. The U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Columbia discovered this summer season that the administration’s growth of this system was in violation of the Privateness Act, the Social Safety Act, the Administrative Process Act and blocked its use.
The courtroom added that some states have been “actively eradicating” residents from voter rolls on the authorities’s urging “based mostly on inaccurate data.”
However a federal choose in Florida dominated weeks later that the federal government should proceed to offer entry to the expanded SAVE system to 4 states.
The Division of Justice advised the D.C. courtroom earlier this month that the federal government is working to adjust to each orders and that entry to the system has been restored solely to the states topic to the conflicting order. However on Friday, in a reply brief looking for enforcement of the courtroom’s earlier order, the League of Girls Voters alleged that DHS was nonetheless utilizing the system, citing, partly, Thursday’s report.
How US residents could be falsely recognized as non-citizens
The Social Safety Administration, in response to a subpoena in 2023, wrote that “the citizenship [data] SSA maintains merely represents a snapshot of the person’s citizenship standing on the time of their interplay with SSA. SSA’s information don’t present definitive details about a person’s citizenship standing.”
Meaning it’s believable for naturalized residents to stay incorrectly categorized as non-citizens in SSA information if they don’t proactively replace their standing with the company.
Actually, in line with a report from the nonpartisan Honest Elections Middle on the adjustments to SAVE, a 2006 audit of SSA information discovered that, “SSA’s citizenship standing information was inaccurate for seven p.c of quantity holders categorized as non-citizens in that they had been really U.S. residents — however had not up to date their immigration/citizenship standing with SSA.’ That will look like a small proportion, however in 2006, that translated to three.3 million U.S. residents being falsely recognized as non-citizens.”
The Social Safety Administration’s predominant campus is seen in Woodlawn, Md., Jan. 11, 2013.
Patrick Semansky/AP Picture, FILE
The Brennan Center for Justice additionally notes that SSA “solely started asking for and sustaining citizenship data for all candidates in 1978. As such, the database doesn’t have complete citizenship data for People born earlier than 1978.”
Officers in Utah, Texas flagged inaccuracies
A number of states which have cooperated with DHS to confirm their voter rolls utilizing the expanded SAVE system have additionally discovered the instrument to be removed from infallible.
Utah, which conducted a comprehensive citizenship review utilizing SAVE in 2025, ran greater than 71,000 information by way of SAVE.
That preliminary evaluation discovered that almost 9,000 individuals couldn’t be confirmed as residents by way of SAVE. However after a guide assessment of these people, the state discovered that over 5,600 of these individuals had been residents, one other 5,000 couldn’t be confirmed, and simply 27 information had been confirmed as non-citizens. One other 25 information had been thought of “probably non-citizens.”
Earlier this yr, Texas’s former secretary of state — who additionally used the system to assist audit the state’s voter rolls — raised issues in regards to the accuracy, in line with a letter obtained through a public information request and printed by Votebeat Texas.
Writing to an official at USCIS in April, former Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson mentioned that her workplace had recognized 2,724 potential non-citizens and that county investigations into these individuals had been ongoing.
“I voted” stickers sit close to a poll field throughout the Democratic primaries at Denver Public Library, on June 30, 2026, in Denver.
Rebecca Slezak/AP Picture
However she continued: “We wish to just remember to are utilizing essentially the most correct information.”
“As my workers has knowledgeable you, county voter registrars have obtained citizenship documentation from some Texas voters who had been recognized within the SAVE system as potential Non-citizens,” she wrote.
She added that the state can also be “conscious of cases through which state driver’s license information inaccurately mirror an individual’s present citizenship standing. As well as, we’ve got discovered of people who had been mistakenly registered to vote–such as attributable to a clerical error by a voter registrar–even although they acknowledged on a voter registration utility that they don’t seem to be U.S. residents.”
Requested by ABC Information in regards to the tendency of the SAVE system to flag lawful U.S. residents as potential non-citizens, a DHS spokesperson mentioned, “USCIS has made enhancements to the SAVE system and to their processes. They’ve carried out a guide assessment course of to make sure accuracy.”
4 states focused by DHS, however officers are skeptical
A number of different states have declined to run their voter rolls by way of the SAVE system, together with the 4 — California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nevada — the place the alleged 250,000 noncitizens are registered.
On Friday, Mullin despatched letters to the highest election officers in these 4 states. In copies of the letters despatched to Pennsylvania and Nevada — and obtained by ABC Information — Mullin advised the states that he wished to alert them to “regarding outcomes” discovered throughout an evaluation of “publicly out there voter registration database data.”
However in line with letters Mullin despatched to the 4 states, the numbers are based mostly on solely a “preliminary assessment.”
The letters all declare that potential non-citizens had been detected utilizing publicly out there voter registration information and that, for a portion of these, “registrants for whom the identify, date of beginning, deal with and Social Safety quantity match a non-citizen in our information” had been flagged, although it is unclear how the administration obtained Social Safety numbers from publicly out there voter information, which doesn’t include that data.
Mullin urged the states to “work collaboratively on id verification” with the federal authorities and phone DHS by a July 30 deadline, the letters mentioned.
However on Friday, elected officers in California and Nevada had been already expressing skepticism on the DHS assertions.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote in an announcement that she would assess the claims, although she cautioned that her workplace had but to obtain Mullin’s letter as of Friday morning.
“We welcome official greatest practices that adjust to state and federal legislation whereas defending Californians’ private data,” Weber wrote. “Nevertheless, the knowledge offered throughout the President’s remarks and on the White Home web site, don’t encourage any stage of confidence within the methodology used or the conclusions reached.”
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar additionally pushed again preemptively in opposition to the information compiled by DHS, calling it “wildly speculative.”
“These numbers are wildly speculative at greatest and the Division of Homeland Safety hasn’t shared something that backs it up,” Aguilar wrote. “The Trump Administration has persistently requested us for data relating to our voter information and made calls for with out answering primary questions.”
Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Middle’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, advised ABC Information on Friday that the methodology specified by the letters despatched by Mullin was doubtful.
“When you say we discovered 250,000 voters on the rolls which are non-citizens, and then you definitely say a bunch of them we discovered utilizing publicly out there voter information, we discovered them by matching their identify and deal with and date of beginning and Social Safety quantity in opposition to the SAVE program. It is like, effectively, the publicly out there voter information would not offer you that. So that does not make any sense,” he mentioned.
Regardless of repeated requests, DHS didn’t affirm to ABC whether or not it used SAVE to conduct its evaluation of the 4 states.
Morales-Doyle described the outcomes as “rubbish in, rubbish out” if DHS used the SAVE instrument to cross-check public voter information.
“I’ve full confidence that these numbers are primarily nugatory, that they do not imply something,” he mentioned. “It conflicts with all out there information and historical past and simply clearly can’t be the case that there are this many noncitizens on the rolls.”
-ABC Information’ Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.
