A federal judge declared a project by the Trump administration to compile personal data of Americans for voter eligibility checks as unlawful. The tool developed from the project is now barred from use. Many states had already processed their voter lists through this system known as SAVE, revamped last year by the Trump administration.
The tool aimed to identify potential noncitizens and deceased voters but mistakenly flagged several American citizens who were foreign-born. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan stated in a 75-page decision that the government had violated privacy rights in a way that jeopardizes voting rights. She emphasized that the court cannot ignore such actions.
NPR was the first to report on the expansion of SAVE aimed at verifying the citizenship of all Americans without following necessary protocols under the Privacy Act.
SAVE System Overhaul
SAVE, managed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was traditionally used for verifying the eligibility of foreign-born individuals for government benefits. This process involved individual checks. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security enabled bulk checks on SAVE. Additionally, they linked SAVE to Social Security Administration data, including records of American-born citizens.
Judge Sooknanan noted in her decision that federal bodies combined and reused the private data of millions of Americans recklessly, including unreliable citizenship data. The order stops the use of the overhauled SAVE tool.
Previously, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of eligible U.S. citizen voters in every state using SAVE. Legal battles are now challenging this order. A prior executive order from March 2025 had also required DHS to provide a free tool for checking voter citizenship status. Parts of this order were halted in court, but USCIS continued updating SAVE.
Impact on Voter Records
This April, Matthew Tragesser from USCIS reported that over 60 million voter records had been processed through SAVE, with 21,000 flagged as potential noncitizens, representing less than 1% of checked records. Trump’s administration has focused on preventing noncitizen voting, though federal law already bans it, and cases are rare.
The DHS responded to NPR, highlighting a statement from the department’s general counsel, James Percival, criticizing the ruling blocking DHS from addressing illegal voting.
Judge Sooknanan concluded in her order that the expansion and overhaul of SAVE lacked legal backing and breached several acts, including the Privacy Act.
“Today’s decision is a win for voters,” stated Marcia Johnson from the League of Women Voters, one of the plaintiffs. “Plans to create a federal voter database to enable voter purges threaten the heart of our democracy.”
Federal notices about SAVE changes, issued retroactively after a lawsuit by plaintiffs, drew tens of thousands of negative comments. Agencies did not alter their plans despite the public backlash.
Nikhel Sus from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington criticized the failure to heed public dissent. He pointed out that the court’s stance mirrored commentators’ views on the unreliability and unlawfulness of the system.
Last December, NPR highlighted the case of Anthony Nel, who faced voter roll removal in Texas after being wrongly flagged as a noncitizen by SAVE. Nel’s experience underscores the problems within the system, according to USCIS, which notes some foreign-born citizens cannot be verified by SAVE.