CREW sues for records on noncitizen voting numbers 

The federal government must respond to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records underlying the Trump administration’s claims about noncitizen voting. CREW filed a FOIA lawsuit and motion for preliminary injunction against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its component the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to compel it to respond to CREW’s requests. 

On July 16, 2026, President Trump delivered an address to the nation, claiming that his administration had identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections. Trump ordered DHS to direct states to remove these ineligible voters immediately. At the same time, despite the President having no such authority, DHS released a so-called “factsheet” asserting that over 250,000 non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to those states’ chief election officials warning them about noncitizen voter registrants, providing state-by-state figures totaling roughly 256,000 alleged noncitizens. In a subsequent press conference, Mullin also threatened officials who didn’t cooperate with DHS with fines and criminal penalties. To date, DHS has declined to disclose its methodology, despite election officials in at least three of the four states demanding it.

The American people still do not know how these dubious figures were produced. On August 14, 2026, CREW submitted FOIA requests on an expedited basis for records showing the data sources and methodology of the Trump administration’s claims. The government has failed to make a timely determination on CREW’s requests. 

It is unclear how DHS could have compiled these numbers through legal means. The Department of Justice has sued 30 states to obtain voter files containing Social Security and driver’s license numbers, and has lost every case decided to date. However, DHS’s letters indicate it matched registrants on precisely those fields. In addition, a federal court vacated DHS’s modified SAVE system after finding its creation unlawful and its results prone to errors that could disenfranchise eligible voters, and that system was offline at least until September 25, 2026, when the Supreme Court allowed it to go into use. This poses questions about how DHS could have conducted mass searches of sensitive voter information without illegally accessing these resources.

Without evidence that the data is accurate, the federal government’s demands may pressure states to violate the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits systematic removals from voter rolls after August 5 precisely to avoid haphazard voter purges that could disenfranchise lawfully registered voters. With the midterms approaching, state officials are grappling with these problems under immense time pressure and worry that similar unverified figures released closer to the election could be used as a justification for federal interference in the counting of ballots. These claims stoke fears about voter fraud, undermine public confidence in election administration and results and may ultimately reduce voter participation in the upcoming election. 

The public needs these records now in order to evaluate whether the federal government’s central factual claim about the integrity of the 2026 elections is credible and whether eligible voters are at risk of being removed from the rolls on the basis of unverified matches.