Trump again makes unverifiable claims of noncitizen voting
NYT > U.S. > Politics — 2026-07-17 00:02:00 — www.nytimes.com
Trump Claims Hundreds of Thousands of Noncitizens Registered to Vote—States and Data Say Otherwise
President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security claimed on Thursday that they had uncovered a significant number of noncitizens registered to vote in four states, but offered no evidence to support their findings nor any description of their investigative process. Trump escalated his longstanding claims about noncitizen voting, stating that the Department of Homeland Security had found “approximately 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.” According to Trump, this figure was based on a document released by the White House from the Department of Homeland Security, which alleged that more than 250,000 noncitizens were registered in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
Lack of Evidence and Immediate Pushback
The document provided by the administration did not explain how it arrived at such a large number and acknowledged that the four states in question do not use the SAVE system, a federal resource for verifying citizenship status. Without access to this system, it is unclear how the Department of Homeland Security could have produced its count using only public voter files.
Election officials in at least one state, Nevada, immediately rebuffed Trump’s claims. Data from the Nevada secretary of state’s office showed that out of 2.1 million active voters, only 138 did not provide a state driver’s license or Social Security number when registering. Nevada officials stated that there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen registration on its voter rolls, and those 138 voters may have registered with other valid forms of identification, such as tribal IDs. Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state, said he had received no notifications from DHS about any such threat.
Pattern of Inflated Claims and Fact-Checking
Trump’s evidence-free claims that noncitizens have voted in elections have been central to his political messaging and his push for the SAVE America Act, a federal voting bill that Democrats argue is designed to benefit Republicans. In the past, Republican state officials have released inflated numbers of alleged noncitizen voters, only to revise those numbers sharply downward after further review.
For example, Iowa initially estimated more than 2,100 potential noncitizens on its voter rolls, but after proper investigation, that number dropped to 277. Of those, only 35 noncitizens cast ballots that were counted in the 2024 general election out of more than 1.6 million ballots. The Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group, has noted that claims of large numbers of noncitizens on voter rolls are “revised significantly downward after proper investigation and scrutiny.”
Methodology in Question
The most recent analysis by DHS appears to rely on publicly available state voter records that are scrubbed of key identifying information for privacy reasons, such as driver’s license numbers. This method is widely recognized as unreliable and prone to inflating numbers. The administration itself has argued in court filings that access to unredacted voter records is necessary to avoid misidentifying duplicate names, a request that states have resisted to protect voter privacy and comply with state laws.
Conclusion
President Trump’s latest claims of widespread noncitizen voter registration lack substantiation and have been directly contradicted by state officials and available data. The pattern of making broad, unverified allegations about election integrity continues to draw criticism from both Democratic and Republican election officials, who emphasize that noncitizen voting remains extremely rare. As states and independent organizations continue to scrutinize these claims, the evidence consistently fails to support the president’s narrative.