A picture of a thumb holding a vote sticker.

EL PASO, Tx., October 21, 2025: In a press release released yesterday, Texas Secretary of State, Jane Nelson says she identified 165 potential noncitizens that are registered to vote in El Paso. Nelson says that after comparing the voter rolls from counties across Texas, she identified 2,724 “potential noncitizens who are registered to vote in Texas.”

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Nelson stated that “only eligible United States citizens may participate in our elections.” She added that when the Trump Administration gave states access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, her agency was able to compare county voter rolls against immigrants in the SAVE database.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the SAVE database allows governmental agencies to verify the immigration status of people seeking benefits. The agency points out that the records to not determine the eligibility of the benefits sought, instead it is the governmental body that makes the determination.

In May, the federal government gave access to state and local governments to help them verify a person’s eligibility to vote. At the time, US Immigration Services spokesperson, Mathew Tragesser said that “under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, USCIS is moving quickly to eliminate voter fraud.”

Officials can determine the immigration status of an immigrant by imputing their social security number.

On August 26, 2024, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that “over one million people” had been removed from the state’s voter rolls under Senate Bill 1. According to Abbott, “over 6,500” were noncitizens. Over half a million voters were removed because they were deceased or were on the “suspense list,” according to Abbott’s announcement. Texas Senate Bill 1 created uniform state voting rules.

Of the 6,500 voters that Abbott said were removed because they were not citizens, the Texas Secretary of State only reported 581 to be “potentially” be noncitizens. Many of those labeled as noncitizens were traced back to their failure to return letters about their citizenship. The majority of those removed from the voter rolls in 2024 were through routine voter roll cleanups where deceased voters, voters who had moved without updating their voter records and criminal convictions, among other routine record updates, are removed from the rolls.

According to Nelson, after comparing Texas voter rolls with the SAVE database, the agency “identified 2,724 potential noncitizens who are registered to vote in Texas,” including 165 in El Paso.

Nelson said that the El Paso County Elections Department will now conduct its own investigation into the eligibility of the voters her agency identified. Ineligible voters will be removed after the investigation is completed.

According to the Texas Secretary of State, in October 2024 there were 18.6 million registered voters across the state. Even if there are 2,724 noncitizens registered to vote in Texas, that number represents less than one percent of Texas voters. The El Paso Elections Department reported this morning that there are 518,378 registered voters in El Paso. Even if the 165 noncitizen voters for El Paso number is accurate, that number is much less than 1% of El Paso’s registered voters (0.000318%).

Being registered to vote does not mean that the voter cast a ballot in an election.

Over the years several attempts have been made to prosecute noncitizens for casting illegal ballots. The available data on noncitizens illegally voting shows that it is “incredibly rare.”

Texas is one of the first states to use the SAVE database to determine the eligibility of voters.

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