Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned state officials on Friday that they could face fines, criminal penalties, and even prison time if they refuse to comply with the administration’s new election security mandates, as President Donald Trump renewed false claims that China interfered in the 2020 election. The threats came one day after Trump’s prime time address on election security, in which he declassified documents he claimed revealed vulnerabilities in US voting systems despite intelligence assessments finding no evidence of foreign manipulation of the 2020 outcome. Mullin outlined steps the Department of Homeland Security wants states to take, including securing voting machines and reviewing voter rolls to verify citizenship, and warned that federal election aid could be withheld from non compliant states. “If states want the grant funding, to recap, they must secure the election,” he said.
The centerpiece of Mullin’s announcement was a DHS report alleging that more than 250,000 non citizens are illegally registered to vote in just four states: California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Mullin said letters were sent to secretaries of state in those states demanding reviews within two weeks, but he provided no methodology or evidence to support the tally, saying only that the figures were pulled from public voter records. State officials immediately pushed back. Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar called the claims “wildly speculative at best,” noting that DHS had shared nothing to back them up. Pennsylvania’s Al Schmidt said the state would review the information but would not share citizens’ private data, adding that “all evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.” California did not respond to requests for comment, while New Jersey referred to a joint statement from 24 Democratic governors criticizing Trump’s false claims as attempts to intimidate and silence voters.
The administration’s claims stand in stark contrast to established research. Multiple comprehensive studies have found non citizen voting to be vanishingly rare. A Brennan Center analysis of 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election found only about 30 incidents of suspected non citizen voting, roughly 0.0001% of ballots cast. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s nationwide database identified just 99 total cases of suspected non-citizen voting going back to the year 2000. A Bipartisan Policy Center analysis of elections between 1999 and 2023 found only 77 instances. State level audits have consistently confirmed the pattern: Georgia’s 2024 review of 8.2 million registered voters found 20 non-citizens; Tennessee’s 2025 audit of 4.3 million voters identified 42 potential cases; and Louisiana’s 4 year review found just 390 suspected non-citizen registrants out of nearly 2.9 million.
Mullin also made unsubstantiated claims about foreign adversaries having “the key to the back” of American voting machines, alleging they could change voter registration and votes. He offered no evidence, and there have been no known attacks by foreign countries to manipulate US elections directly. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will release an “updated election infrastructure plan within 30 days,” Mullin said. The threats come as Republicans face the prospect of losing one or both chambers of Congress in November, with Trump’s approval rating weighed down by the unpopular Iran war and high energy prices. Courts have already blocked Trump administration efforts to obtain state voter rolls, dealing a blow to its push to expand the federal government’s role in elections. For now, the administration is using the bully pulpit and the threat of withheld funding to pressure states into compliance, a strategy that risks further politicizing election administration four months before voters head to the polls.
