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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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Democratic senators are warning that American citizens are having their privacy violated by the Trump administration’s efforts to seek out illegal immigrants on state voter rolls.
In a filing Friday made public Wednesday, Senators Alex Padilla of California and Gary Peters of Michigan joined a lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, claiming millions of voter records had been passed through the program without enough oversight.
“DHS is actively advertising and encouraging states to use the overhauled SAVE program for voter verification and several states have begun to do so, running tens of millions of voter files through this expanded system,” wrote the senators in the legal brief.
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“These actions — which, again, are occurring outside the bounds of the law — create an intolerable risk that eligible American voters will be disenfranchised and perhaps even wrongly prosecuted for their alleged ineligibility. This cannot continue.”
Newsweek reached out to DHS for comment via email on Wednesday.
The department has argued previously that inter-agency data sharing will aid in achieving the president’s goals of removing millions of illegal immigrants and increasing national security, but that has been met with skepticism.
“The SAVE expansion isn’t about election integrity; it’s about expanding surveillance under the guise of voter verification,” Sydney Saubestre, a senior policy analyst at New America's Open Technology Institute, told Newsweek. “If the government can’t be trusted to respect the limits on how it uses our data, it can’t be trusted to protect our democracy.”
Why It Matters
The Trump administration has been clear that it intends to use every tool at its disposal to enforce immigration law and carry out the mass deportations the president promised on the campaign trail. Its efforts have come up against multiple legal challenges, including the use of previously siloed government data to track down those in the United States without legal status.
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What To Know
Padilla and Peters are the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, respectively. In their announcement on Wednesday, they expressed deep concerns that the federal government was creating a “massive interagency database of Americans’ sensitive personal data."
The expansion of the SAVE program is not new information, as DHS announced in April that it would optimize its use to verify non-citizen status across the country. At the time, the department said it would stop illegal immigrants from exploiting taxpayer benefits and voting illegally.
In the lawsuit League of Women Voters vs. DHS, to which Padilla and Peters added their voices, it is alleged that the expansion of SAVE will allow federal agencies to “unlawfully open investigations and purge voter rolls."
Previous claims that immigrants without legal status have been able to vote in elections have been debunked, with most elections only open to U.S. citizens. Some local issues can be voted on by green card holders, but this is not the norm.
Part of the concern from those behind the lawsuit is that voter rolls accessible through the SAVE program may be outdated. An immigrant may now be a citizen eligible to vote, but the system may still flag them as ineligible.
While the focus from DHS has been on seeking out immigrants without legal status, plaintiffs argue that Americans—namely, their privacy—will suffer, with the two senators adding that Congress has not been properly notified of the expansion, when it should have been.
The pair stated in their filing that they had made repeated attempts to contact DHS for information on the SAVE program’s overhaul but had received no response. They found this particularly concerning, especially since voting history may now be included in the information accessible to federal agencies.
What People Are Saying
Sydney Saubestre, a senior policy analyst at New America's Open Technology Institute, told Newsweek: “This is part of a broader pattern of data overreach that should alarm everyone. We’ve seen this playbook before—from the failed Presidential Election Integrity Commission’s sweeping request for state voter data to efforts by the Trump administration to broker data-sharing agreements between the IRS and DHS that would have given immigration authorities access to taxpayer information.
“These attempts have repeatedly pushed the limits of what’s legal and ethical, blurring the boundaries that protect Americans’ most sensitive data. What’s happening with the SAVE program now fits that same mold. Systems that were never designed for bulk searches are being repurposed with little oversight.”
Abigail Kunkler, a law fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, one of the plaintiffs, told Newsweek: "There are safeguards in place, none of which DHS has concerned itself with. Under the Privacy Act, DHS should have given Congress and the public notice and an opportunity to weigh in on the changes to SAVE. It didn't do that. It should be keeping a record of information disclosures, establishing procedures to protect the information, assessing the risks to people's rights. It didn't do any of that. DHS is acting well outside its authority here. This is a blatant attempt to disenfranchise voters. Every American's information is implicated in this."
M. Christian Green, president of the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, in a press release on October 7: “This administration’s unlawful data collection threatens the very foundation of our democracy. We’re taking action to ensure every eligible voter in Louisiana — and across the country — can safely participate in our elections.”
A DHS spokesperson, in April: “Illegal aliens have exploited outdated systems to defraud Americans and taint our elections. Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, this revamped SAVE system will ensure government officials can swiftly verify legal status, halting entitlements and voter fraud.”
What Happens Next
Padilla and Peters are asking a District Judge in the District of Columbia to grant a preliminary injunction, stopping DHS from collecting and deploying the data, arguing that it violates federal law.
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