President Donald Trump shakes hands with newly sworn-in Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin during a ceremony in the Oval Office on March 24, 2026. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened Friday to prosecute election officials in states that do not “commit to securing elections” ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Election officials who do not follow administrative instructions to improve the security of voting machines and share voter data with the federal government through the powerful Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement computer program would be subject to fines and even prison time, he said.
“If states choose not to participate in the SAVE program and not participate in securing elections, we will ensure that those states prioritize auditing who voted in their states and hold election officials accountable,” Mullin said during a press conference.
The Trump administration will make it mandatory for states to make security improvements to their voting machines and withhold grants or refunds from any states that don’t, he said.
The mandate is necessary, he said, because foreign adversaries produce parts that are key parts in U.S. voting machines and can “alter voter registration and your vote.”
“The machines need to be secured and your voter registration list needs to be cleaned,” he said, summarizing the department’s message to state officials. “Our machines are vulnerable. Steps can be taken now to protect them.”
Earlier Friday, Mullin sent a letter to the secretaries of state of four states the department had audited – Nevada, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – warning them about the “tens of thousands of non-citizens who are illegally on the states’ voter rolls.”
Leaders of those states immediately pushed back against Mullin and President Donald Trump’s claims.
It’s unclear what powers Mullin would exploit to investigate the state’s election administration. The U.S. Constitution authorizes states to hold elections.
But it’s clear that the Trump administration sees election security as a top priority ahead of the midterm elections.
Mullin’s comments followed President Donald Trump’s address to the nation on Thursday night, in which he declared that U.S. electoral systems were vulnerable to foreign cyberattacks and that nations such as China and Iran had attempted to influence the outcome of past elections, including 2018 and 2020.
Non-citizen election
Trump has long focused on non-citizens voting, which is sporadic.
Mullin said Friday that the Department of Homeland Security had reviewed voter rolls in some states and discovered more than 250,000 non-citizens registered to vote.
The federal government will make it a priority to “audit who voted in their states” and hold their election officials accountable, Mullin said.
The federal government will go through the records “one by one,” he said at the news conference, and bring maximum charges against anyone found to have voted illegally, including up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
SAVE in court
The SAVE program allows local jurisdictions to determine an individual’s immigration status for purposes such as applying for government jobs, welfare benefits and driver’s licenses.
The government wants states to exploit the powerful computer system to verify the citizenship of people on voter rolls and is fighting in court to restore exploit of the program after a federal court ruled in June that the expansion was unlawful.
Mullin blamed the program pause on “activist judges” who didn’t want a protected election.
The SAVE program is distinct from, but shares its acronym with, the SAVE America Act, a bill that proposes to restrict voter access by imposing requirements for registration and voting, including photo IDs. The bill is stalled in the U.S. Senate and does not provide funding for election security infrastructure.
Democratic officials cry foul
At Mullin’s letter To Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar shared with States Newsroom, Mullin shared “concerning results” from a preliminary review of Nevada’s voter registration data that showed up to 15,903 non-citizens were registered to vote.
“I hope you will join in the commitment to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in our federal elections,” Mullin wrote. “Allowing even one non-citizen to vote will invalidate the vote of a U.S. citizen.”
Mullin said his team will assist the state “take action to protect Nevada voters and ensure that ineligible voters do not have an impact on the upcoming federal election.”
Aguilar, a Democrat, said in a statement to States Newsroom on Friday that the department’s estimate was “extremely speculative at best.” The department “has not communicated anything to substantiate this,” he added.
Aguilar said there are several safeguards in place to prevent non-citizens or other ineligible voters from casting their ballots and that Nevada conducts “some of the safest, most secure and accessible elections in the country.”
“The government lacks a basic understanding of how elections work,” Aguilar wrote. “They just want to create chaos and doubt before the midterm elections.”
In a statement Friday afternoon, Pennsylvania’s Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth, Al Schmidt, said all evidence suggests that voting by noncitizens is “extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.”
Every resident must take several steps to verify their identity before casting their vote or registering to vote, he said.
“While the department has made clear that we cannot share Pennsylvanians’ private, personal information, we will review all information provided by DHS so we can assess the validity of these claims,” Schmidt said.
California under attack
California has been repeatedly criticized by Trump over its elections. In his speech on Thursday eveninghe expressed doubts about the integrity of the state’s recent mayoral and gubernatorial elections in Los Angeles.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the claims false and unfounded.
“Non-citizen voting remains extremely rare,” she said. “In California, election officials work every day to maintain accurate voter rolls and ensure only eligible voters are registered to vote.”
She said her team will carefully review Mullin’s letter to evaluate the methodology behind his claims and “welcome legitimate best practices that are consistent with state and federal law while protecting Californians’ personal information.”
“However, the information provided during the President’s remarks and on the White House website does not inspire a level of confidence in the methodology used or the conclusions reached,” she added. “If the president is truly committed to election integrity, he must stop undermining trust in our democracy, making it harder for eligible Americans to vote, and attempting to usurp authority that the Constitution clearly reserves to the states.”
