Federal judge blocks Trump's push to use database to check citizenship status prior to voting
A U.S. federal judge ruled that the Trump administration's revamped SAVE program, designed to cross-check voter rolls against immigration data, is unlawful and threatens voting rights.
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration's use of an updated federal tool aimed at nationalizing elections. U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups arguing that the revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program aggregates sensitive personal data of Americans in a way that could lead to wrongful purging of voters from rolls.
The judge stated that the federal government knowingly violated Americans' privacy rights, threatening the sacred right to vote. She noted that Congress explicitly prohibited the centralization of personally identifiable information and that the agencies behind SAVE knew the database violated those statutory protections.
This decision is a major legal setback for President Donald Trump's efforts to use federal agencies to crack down on non-citizens illegally on state voter rolls. The SAVE system, criticized as an unlawful centralized voter database, was a key part of Trump's second election executive order signed earlier this year. Its future is now uncertain.
James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, posted on social media, "It's amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist." The Department of Justice said it would "continue to aggressively defend President Trump's immigration enforcement agenda and DHS's use of the SAVE system to verify citizenship."
The executive order to create a national voter list is among many steps Trump has taken in his second term to overhaul election administration. He also tried to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, ban counting mail ballots received after Election Day, and prohibit the Postal Service from mailing ballots to people not on an approved list. Most of these have been blocked by courts, partly because the Constitution gives states and Congress authority over election rules, not the president.
Voting by non-citizens is already illegal, a potential felony punishable by deportation, and is rare—accounting for a tiny fraction of state voter rolls. The SAVE program was created under immigration law requiring DHS to help agencies prevent benefits from going to non-citizens. A little over half a dozen states have used it since April 2025, after the Trump administration expanded its search capabilities. At least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program.
