Trump Administration’s Noncitizen Voter List Flags Thousands of Citizens in California
Experts find thousands of U.S. citizens wrongly flagged on Trump administration’s California noncitizen voter list.
NASA/Bill Ingalls/NASA
The Trump administration’s effort to identify noncitizen voters in California has backfired, as experts revealed thousands of U.S. citizens were mistakenly flagged on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) list. The revelation emerged from a supplemental court filing by immigrant advocates who challenged the list’s accuracy, raising concerns about voter rights and potential wrongful investigations.
Errors Discovered in DHS Voter Ineligibility List
Lawyers for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) informed the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the DHS list of 20,930 names flagged as ineligible to vote in California includes citizens among CHIRLA’s members and clients. The filing, submitted on Saturday, names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Attorney General Todd Blanche as defendants alongside DHS.
The court-ordered data review was conducted by Mathew Barreto, Ph.D., and data scientist Michael Rios. Their analysis confirmed “there are entries on the CHIRLA citizen members and clients list that are on the DHS ineligible list of 20,930 names,” using rigorous social science matching methods.
Matching Criteria Reveal Confirmed Citizen Flags
The experts identified at least 22 exact matches between CHIRLA’s citizen list and the DHS list. These matches aligned perfectly on first, middle, and last names, date of birth, and exact address—criteria stricter than those used by the government in its own declarations. Notably, two of these exact matches reside in Santa Cruz County.
Using a broader matching standard, which the government accepts as a probable match—based on first and last name, birth year, and street name or zip code—the experts found 6,140 CHIRLA citizen entries that could face wrongful investigation.
Large Portion of List Not Found on Voter Records
The analysis also showed that 8,880 names on the DHS list, or 42 percent, could not be located anywhere on the current California voter file. This discrepancy raises questions about the list’s overall reliability and the basis for targeting these individuals.
Extrapolations Point to Widespread Risks for Voters
Projecting CHIRLA’s findings to California’s 3.8 million naturalized citizen voters, the experts estimate the DHS list could generate:
- 3,743 “certain incorrect matches”
- 7,486 “highly likely incorrect matches”
- Up to 348,238 probabilistic incorrect matches, depending on matching criteria and list accuracy
This scale of potential error underscores the threat posed to eligible voters statewide, not only CHIRLA’s members or clients.
Legal Challenge Highlights Threats to Voting Rights
The plaintiffs argue the administration’s demands on election officials, under threat of civil and criminal penalties, imperil the voting rights of thousands. They emphasize the danger the list poses to eligible California voters broadly, stressing the risk of unwarranted investigations and disenfranchisement.
The case continues to unfold amid heightened scrutiny of the Trump administration’s approach to election integrity and voter eligibility enforcement.
These findings expose critical flaws in the government’s efforts to root out noncitizen voters, raising urgent questions about accuracy, fairness, and the protection of voting rights for naturalized U.S. citizens in California.
