Long before Donald Trump secured his second reelection, the former president and his political base had already positioned immigration as the centerpiece of their campaigning and messaging. Alongside a litany of other false conspiracy theories, right-wing groups fully embraced the baseless claim that massive numbers of immigrants were casting illegal ballots in U.S. elections. Once back in office, the Trump administration poured billions of dollars into expanding immigration enforcement, and in March, Trump issued an executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to guarantee states “access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.”
That May, DHS began encouraging state election officials to cross-check their voter rolls against federal immigration data via the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Today, SAVE has access to datasets across the entire federal government, covering not only immigrants but U.S. citizens as well.
Experts have long warned that combining mismatched datasets collected for entirely separate purposes will inevitably lead to errors, most notably misclassifying U.S. citizens as noncitizens. According to the plaintiffs in a new federal lawsuit, this problematic outcome is already unfolding.
The complaint, filed against DHS and the Social Security Administration (SSA) in Washington, D.C. District Court by the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), alleges that the expanded SAVE program has already gotten eligible American citizens removed from state voter rolls, and that the creation of a de facto national citizenship database is unconstitutional.
“Eligible U.S. citizen voters will be wrongfully purged from voter rolls based on inaccurate data from the illegally overhauled SAVE system,” says Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which represents the plaintiffs in the case. DHS did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
SAVE was first launched in 1986 for one narrow purpose: allowing states to confirm if immigrants applying for public benefits met eligibility requirements. For decades, it had no access to records of natural-born U.S. citizens. But as the Trump administration advanced its broader crackdown on immigration, DHS radically expanded the tool’s scope and capabilities.
Last April, WIRED reported that SAVE was already querying data from the SSA, the Internal Revenue Service, and state voter datasets. On May 22, DHS announced a formal “partnership” with the SSA and rolled out SAVE as an official voter verification tool for state and local governments. The goal, according to USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser, was to “identify and stop aliens from hijacking our elections.” Twenty-two states, including Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, already have agreements in place to use SAVE for voter citizenship checks by bulk-uploading full voter roll and personal identification information, the suit alleges. By doing so, the complaint argues, some of these states have already disenfranchised eligible, lawfully registered voters.
In October, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced the state had identified 2,724 “potential noncitizens” registered to vote. One of those flagged, Anthony Nel, is in fact a U.S. citizen. According to the complaint, SAVE misidentified Nel as a noncitizen “based on outdated data, leading to his voter registration being wrongfully canceled in December 2025.” When asked for comment, Texas Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Alicia Pierce referred WIRED to the October press release where the state announced its SAVE review findings.
“We’re talking about a documented error rate that will result—and already has resulted—in multiple people being kicked off the voter rolls, going into a critical election,” says John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel at EPIC, one of the case’s plaintiffs.
States are not required to immediately purge voters flagged by SAVE; instead, they are supposed to contact voters directly to confirm their status. But if voters never receive the notice or cannot respond by the deadline, their registration is at high risk of cancellation. “It’s a burden that lawfully registered voters shouldn’t have to bear,” says Davisson.
Peer-reviewed research has consistently shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. For years, Trump and his supporters have spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about U.S. election integrity, turning the issue into a core talking point of the right-wing media ecosystem. “Just by identifying potential noncitizen voters through SAVE, regardless of whether they actually are noncitizens, this false narrative will be further fueled,” says Sus. “There is a broader concern about sowing distrust in the integrity of our election results.”
The complaint argues that “DHS and SSA lack any statutory or constitutional authority to transform SAVE into a national data bank to conduct citizenship checks for purposes of determining individuals’ eligibility to vote in elections.” It contends that adding Social Security data to the system not only introduces widespread potential inaccuracy, but effectively redefines SAVE into something entirely new: a national citizenship database.
A privacy threshold analysis (PTA) conducted by USCIS, obtained by the plaintiffs via a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by WIRED, confirms that USCIS was fully aware that “shortfalls in data accuracy in the system could cause incomplete or false results,” even as DHS encouraged states to adopt the tool for voter verification. The PTA marked SAVE as “not in compliance” with federal privacy regulations, in part because the agency had not issued the legally required system of records notice to inform the public that Social Security data was being shared for immigration and voter verification purposes.
Completed in July 2025, the PTA notes that inaccuracies in the new SAVE system often stem from gaps in electronic records, particularly SSA records that were “not reliably recorded pre-1981.” The analysis further acknowledges that USCIS “is not the source agency for Social Security Administration–related information” and therefore “cannot verify accuracy” of SSA data pulled into SAVE.
“Voters are being wrongfully and illegally removed from the rolls on the basis of data that is known to be inaccurate,” says Davisson.
Leland Dudek, former acting commissioner of the SSA, says the PTA accurately reflects the inherent risks of using Social Security data in SAVE for voter checks. “Social Security numbers were never intended for this use case,” says Dudek. “The records of Social Security are for the discreet and explicit purposes of old age survivors, disability insurance, and Social Security insurance.”
Social Security numbers are issued to anyone legally allowed to work in the U.S. and do not change once a person naturalizes as a citizen. Immigration and naturalization processes are managed by DHS, and naturalized citizens are not required to notify the SSA when their status changes, meaning SSA data is often outdated. (In March 2025, SSA suspended a program that automatically mailed Social Security cards to newly naturalized citizens and people newly authorized to work in the U.S., instead requiring them to appear in person at one of the agency’s regional offices.)
Dudek says the new SAVE tool was not properly vetted before it was rolled out for voter verification. “It needed to be rolled out in a way that was thoughtful,” he says. “When you're targeting the most fundamental right of democracy, you have to give consideration and gather input.”
This use of Social Security data to create a de facto national citizenship verification system extends far beyond DHS’s legal authority, Sus says. “Congress has provided no specific statutory authorization for the Department of Homeland Security to create a national citizenship data bank to look up any American’s citizenship status,” Sus says. “DHS is effectively imposing a backdoor, federal documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for voters whose citizenship SAVE can’t confirm. Not only will this needlessly burden the voting rights of U.S. citizens, but it undermines Congress’ choice to not adopt a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for voting.”
As the 2026 midterms draw closer, other policy efforts to further restrict voting access are already moving forward. Congress is considering a standalone SAVE Act that would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. Billionaire Elon Musk has publicly supported ending the Senate filibuster to pass so-called “election integrity” legislation. Earlier this week, a separate court filing revealed that a member of the SSA’s Department of Government Efficiency team signed a “Voter Data Agreement” with a political advocacy group seeking to “find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain states.”
Even without these additional changes, the SAVE program expansion is enough to trigger deep concern among voting rights advocates. Sus worries SAVE will create new, unnecessary barriers to voting ahead of the 2026 midterms. “In Texas, there are primary elections coming up in March,” he says. “If a voter’s registration is canceled close to that election, and they don't have time to get together the documentary proof of citizenship that is required to reinstate their registration, then they may lose the right to vote.”
