“According to the DHS review, state voter rolls, and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.”

Prime-time address to the nation, East Room of the White House

The figure is two different numbers added together, and only one of them has a stated method. The Homeland Security summary released with the speech gives over 250,000 non-citizens illegally registered in just the four states for which public data files had been reviewed, and separately over 28,000 non-citizens flagged out of more than 68 million registration records processed through the SAVE system by 25 states as of June 22, 2026. The document gives no matching methodology for the four-state figure. The department's own release the next day calls that figure potential non-citizens from preliminary reviews, and gives per-state numbers: California 190,832, New Jersey 35,152, Nevada 15,903 and Pennsylvania 14,576.

Two of the four states disputed their own numbers. Nevada's secretary of state said the claims were refuted on their face, that the numbers were wildly speculative at best, and that the department had shared nothing to back them up. Pennsylvania's Republican secretary of the commonwealth reported that department representatives said they did not have high confidence in the Pennsylvania figure. The department did publish state figures, send letters to the four secretaries of state, call that account a mischaracterisation and, in September 2026, describe an attribute-matching method under which more matching attributes mean a higher confidence level, and that is the claim's best defence. Neither he nor the department said any of the people counted had voted.