Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently threatened state officials with prison time if they did not “scrub” their voter rolls with the expanded SAVE System — used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services originally intended to determine eligibility for government benefits — not legal voting, reports ABC News:
The SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) system is not a comprehensive record of American citizens; it is a tool used to search collections of federal records and databases to assist in verifying immigration and citizenship status.
Prior to 2025, the system was restricted to querying known immigrants, non-citizens and naturalized citizens against DHS data to verify their status.
Last year, the Trump administration expanded the SAVE system to verify the citizenship status of all people registered to vote — including natural-born citizens.
A core part of that effort included DHS expanding the ability to query the SAVE system using Social Security numbers and Social Security Administration (SSA) data, enabling broader, bulk searches of state voter rolls using more basic demographic information.
According to a fact sheet on the expanded SAVE system published by USCIS, which has since been taken down, even the administration acknowledged that “SAVE may not be able to confirm U.S. citizenship for an individual who … is not designated as a U.S. citizen in SSA records.”
The fact sheet noted states must “take additional steps when required by SAVE for any case response other than ‘United States Citizen,'” before removing someone from the voter rolls.
(Source: ABC News)