DHS Reports Nearly 200K Illegal Immigrants on California Voter Rolls

In a July 16, 2026 letter from DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (and similar letters to officials in New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania), DHS stated that a review of publicly available voter registration data indicated “there may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California.” It gave an example of 81,336 registrants matching name, date of birth, address, and Social Security number to non-citizens in DHS files. The combined figures cited for the four states were roughly: California 190,832; New Jersey 35,152; Nevada 15,903; Pennsylvania 14,576, totaling over 250,000.

“The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for immigration enforcement and protecting election infrastructure,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to SOS Weber. “Both of these responsibilities are critical in my mission to protect the Homeland. I am writing to make you aware of the concerning results of a recent analysis of California’s publicly available voter registration database information. Preliminary review of the records revealed that there may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California. As an example, we found 81,336 California registrants for whom the name, date of birth, address and Social Security number match a non-citizen in our files. The most efficient way to ensure the accuracy of our findings is to work collaboratively on identity verification.”

California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada opted not to use a new federal citizenship database, a Homeland Security review found more than a quarter million noncitizens registered to vote, Just the News reported.

Additionally, in President Donald Trump’s speech last week about election integrity, he shared intelligence findings that the People’s Republic of China has “compromised” more than 200 million voter records across at least 18 U.S. states.

Trump said that during the 2020 election cycle the People’s Republic of China carried out “the largest compromise of election data in history,” resulting in the “illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” He said the data included names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other details, and that U.S. spy agencies learned in 2020 that tens of millions of records from at least 18 states had been “bought, stolen, or hacked” by China, but instead of exposing this, suppressed the information to benefit Democrats in the election.

USA Today reported:

“U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data – think of that, tens of millions of voters’ data – in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China,” Trump said. “Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden.”

It was, Trump said, “an unprecedented election security nightmare.”

As for California’s 190,000 illegal immigrants on the voter rolls, DHS reviewed voter registrations as part of a Trump administration priority to address concerns about illegal voting in the U.S. using the SAVE system, a controversial citizenship database that includes Social Security numbers, Just the News reported. The administration is offering the centralized records to states to identify non-citizens on voter rolls across the country.

The four states opted not to utilize the SAVE system, prompting the agency to conduct a separate review using publicly available voter records.

DHS Secretary Mullin told California SOS Weber to “please contact elections@hq.dhs.gov at DHS by July 30, 2026. We look forward to thiscollaboration as we work together to ensure free, fair and accurate elections.”

And this is why California voters need to pass Proposition 39 the Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative, and Congress needs to pass the SAVE America Act Requirement for Voter I.D.