DHS surges voter fraud investigations in Nevada and 8 other states, report says

With two months until Election Day, the Department of Homeland Security is launching a surge of voter fraud investigations in Nevada and eight other states, according to a CNN report that cited internal agency communications.

The DHS did not dispute CNN’s findings, but said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that it cannot comment on pending investigations and reiterated administration claims that noncitizens can and do vote in U.S. elections.

“DHS is laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens,” an agency spokesperson wrote. “Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation.”

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar’s office said that it had not been notified of new election-related investigations.

Aguilar alleged that the development — which falls in line with President Donald Trump’s yearslong claims of widespread voter fraud — will sow distrust in the integrity of November’s midterm elections and likely disenfranchise voters, he said in his own statement.

“The Trump administration is relentless in their efforts to cause doubt into the integrity of our elections,” he wrote. “They continue to put Nevada at the forefront of their efforts, because they know Nevada is the road to the White House, and our voters will choose the next President in 2028.”

Hundreds of agents looking into voter fraud

CNN reported Monday that the DHS tapped its Homeland Security Investigations arm to begin voter-fraud probes in Nevada, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Connecticut and Georgia. The probes began Tuesday and are planned through mid-October.

The New York Times expanded on CNN’s story, reporting Wednesday that hundreds of agents would be involved in the operations and that the probes would include field interviews and “timely prosecutorial review.”

The newspaper said it had access to internal DHS documents and training videos.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., told the Review-Journal on Wednesday that Nevada authorities and the FBI have done a fine job of identifying illegal voters in the past.

She said, however, that she doesn’t believe the Trump administration’s claims about hundreds of thousands of potential noncitizens registered to vote, and she won’t believe it without seeing concrete proof.

“If you have claims of voter fraud, bring it forward. I want to see it,” Cortez Masto said. “And we know that they don’t.”

Cortez Masto, a former Nevada attorney general, said she is confident that the number of noncitizens who vote illegally is small. She said she would prefer that the administration work with local and state law enforcement officials to address the issue.

Homeland Security Investigations agents typically investigate trafficking, exploitation and financial fraud and scams, according to the agency. The DHS investigative arm has offices in 235 cities, including presence in Las Vegas.

“Anyone caught illegally voting in our elections will be held accountable nationwide. Despite the media and Democrats claiming it never happens, the evidence of non-citizens registering and voting in our elections continues to pile up,” wrote White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis in a statement. “Only Americans should be electing American leaders.”

DHS already looking into potential voter fraud in Nevada

During a July prime-time address centered around the integrity of U.S. elections, Trump said that a DHS review had identified more than 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in the country.

Court rulings, election experts and officials in the past have disputed Trump’s claims about widespread voter fraud, which date back to his unsuccessful 2020 reelection bid.

Without providing a specific breakdown, a DHS memo declassified the day of the speech singled out Nevada as one of four states where investigators had purportedly found more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote.

The document coincided with a letter from DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to Aguilar saying that a review of Nevada records had found that there may be as many as 15,903 noncitizens in the state’s voter rolls.

Nevada’s chief elections official dismissed the figure as “speculative at best,” and requested more information from DHS. In a meeting with Aguilar’s office last month, federal officials said that they had confirmed 185 noncitizens through manual reviews, describing Mullin’s original figure as a “ceiling.”

DHS official Kimberley Vogt told Aguilar’s office that the original figure was preliminary, and that the investigators still had to review more than 14,000 names. She sent Aguilar’s office the identities of the 185 people whom the federal government said it had confirmed were noncitizens, and the names of 6,218 others it described as “higher confidence matches” it still needed to look into.

The DHS uses its SAVE system that cross-references voter records with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services databases. Since April 2025, the agency has referred about 25,000 cases of potential would-be illegal voters for further investigation, the agency said this week.

The system doesn’t have access to all potential data that could confirm citizenship, the DHS said. “When someone claiming to be a citizen is flagged as a potential noncitizen, USCIS manually checks the case for inconsistencies before sending the results back to the state and to Homeland Security Investigations.”

The DHS highlighted the cases of four noncitizens arrested in HSI-led operations on allegations of voting illegally in Pennsylvania and Florida.

“SAVE is a secure and reliable way for user states to verify the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote to prevent aliens from illegally participating in our elections,” the DHS said. “USCIS urges all states to adopt SAVE and join us in safeguarding the voting rights of American citizens.”