President Donald Trump says thousands of non-voting immigrants are registering to vote in the upcoming elections, although research confirms that non-voting participation is rare.

In fact, President Trump's legal team failed to prove this narrative in court in 2020 and 2021 about the voting of thousands of undocumented immigrants or those with non-citizen visas.

Despite this, reports published by the White House affirm – in a summary report – that at least 250,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada.

“[Those states] have been notified of this serious threat to national security, and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] stands ready to support their efforts to identify and remove undocumented voters,” states the report published by the White House after President Trump's speech. “The investigation is expanding to include several additional states.”

DHS will reportedly support the Justice Department's review of voter records, which were obtained under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

The Trump administration does not provide a breakdown of the 250,000 illegally registered voters in the four states mentioned, but adds figures from several Republican-governed states where there would be people irregularly registered to vote, including Georgia, with 2,549 cases of registered non-citizens; Ohio with 769; Tennessee with 1,009; Texas with 2,296; North Carolina with 1,599; Idaho with 49; Alabama with 465; Missouri with 1,112; Louisiana with 419, and Kansas with 449.

The report also does not specify why such states would have allowed the registration of such people to vote or what the specific actions against them were, but the Trump administration celebrates the collaboration of the entities to apply the system called SAVE, similar to the SAVE Act promoted by the president together with Republicans in Congress.

“These states are serious about ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in U.S. elections. DHS applauds their efforts to prevent noncitizens from registering and to remove ineligible registrants who register illegally,” the report states. “Several other proactive state officials have also signed Memorandums of Understanding with USCIS to use the SAVE system and have processed part of their state voter rolls.”

The office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York) dismissed several aspects of Trump's speech on Thursday, including affirmation of the vote of thousands of non-citizens.

“Claims about the supposed massive participation of non-citizens in the vote have been systematically denied,” indicates a report from that office. “Notably, under the influence of President Trump, many GOP-governed states have withdrawn from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the national clearinghouse that helps states improve the accuracy of voter rolls.”

Senator Schumer accuses that President Trump seeks to justify the SAVE Act project, which is stalled in Congress.

A judge stopped Trump

Last June, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the creation by the Trump government of a database with private information on millions of Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status, on which the list that presumes irregularities would have been made.

“The federal government has deliberately trampled on the right to privacy of American citizens in a way that threatens the sacred right to vote,” the district judge wrote in a 75-page ruling. “This court cannot stand by while this happens.”

That ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters and other civil rights groups. The judge – appointed by Joe Biden – affirmed that the new SAVE system operated by DHS combines citizenship data with information from the Social Security Administration to create a centralized system that Congress has expressly prohibited.

In its report on alleged irregular voters, the Trump administration criticizes the judge.

“Unfortunately, due to the actions of activist Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, many of the improvements to this USCIS service have been suspended pending appeal,” it states.

The idea is even promoted that the votes of Americans are “diluted” by the votes of non-citizens, despite various reports that indicate the minimal existence of votes from people without the right to vote.

“As a result, American citizens risk having their votes diluted by ineligible foreign voters,” the Trump administration says.

Reports deny systemic voting in an irregular manner

As of May 2024, the CATO Institute indicated that the percentage of “noncitizens who vote or register to vote” is less than one percent.

The report criticizes a Republican witness who cited before the House of Representatives that investigator James Agresti stated that between “10% and 27% of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote.” The text cited was from 2020, based on a 2014 article by Jesse Richman and other authors, based on responses to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) for the 2008 elections. The article was questioned for using surveys as a method to measure registered voters.

In 2017, research by Myrna Pérez – who is now a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals – and Douglas Keith conducted research for the Brennan Center for Justice in 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election.

“Election officials in those locations, who oversaw the counting of 23.5 million votes, referred approximately 30 cases of alleged noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution,” it said. “In other words, even suspected—unproven—noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001% of the votes cast.”