WASHINGTON (TNND) — Texas has found thousands of illegal immigrants registered to vote on state voter rolls. Secretary of State Jane Nelson said the potential noncitizens were flagged through a cross-check of the state’s 18 million registered voters against federal citizenship records in the USCIS ‘SAVE’ database, which found over 2,700 possible illegal immigrants registered on its voter rolls.

“The SAVE database has proven to be a critically important data set and one of many that we will continue to use in Texas to ensure that only qualified voters cast a ballot in our elections,” Nelson said in a statement.

That is quite a change from prior administration’s, which always put up red tape and tried to prevent this,” said Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

The findings will now lead to an eligibility review across the state’s 254 counties. Governor Greg Abbott said that since Senate Bill 1 was signed into law in 2021, which introduced new voter roll restrictions, over one million ineligible registrations have been removed.

We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting,” Abbott said.

The announcement in Texas comes amid growing national scrutiny of voter rolls. Georgia, Arizona and Florida have conducted similar audits. Spakovsky told The National News Desk, Virginia is also taking notice.

But just based on their own checking of DMV records, they announced that since 2014, they had removed more than 10,000 aliens from their voter rolls,” Spakovsky said.

Plus, in Ohio, election officials announced earlier this year they’re removing thousands of inactive voters ‘SAVE’ identified as deceased. Officials in Louisiana also identified 79 likely noncitizens who voted in at least one election since the 1980s.

I know for certain that there are other states like California and New York who have no interest in this,” said Spakovsky.

Texas was among the first states to partner with USCIS to compare its voter list with the ‘SAVE’ database. Nelson says each flagged voter will receive a notice from their county registrar giving them 30 days to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.