Judge Blocks Trump Database for Voter Citizenship Checks

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s overhaul of a federal immigration database used to verify voter citizenship, ruling that the system unlawfully aggregated Americans’ personal data and risked wrongfully purging eligible voters from the rolls.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued a 75-page ruling finding that the administration’s expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program violated the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The judge wrote that federal agencies “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable,” according to AP News.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

What the SAVE Overhaul Did

The SAVE program was created in 1986 to help agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens, operating through one-at-a-time checks. The Trump administration, with assistance from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), dramatically expanded it in 2025. The overhaul allowed bulk searches of voter records, linked SAVE to Social Security Administration data for the first time, included records of American-born citizens, and permitted queries using names, birthdays, and Social Security numbers.

At least 25 states used the revamped system since April 2025, and more than 67 million voter registrations were scanned through the program, as NPR reported. USCIS reported that 21,000 individuals — less than 1% — were flagged as potential noncitizens.

Evidence of Errors

The judge cited evidence that the system flagged U.S. citizens as noncitizens. In Texas alone, 2,724 people were identified as “potential noncitizens.” In Travis County, at least 11 people flagged were confirmed to be U.S. citizens, according to Votebeat.

Anthony Nel, a South Africa-born naturalized U.S. citizen of more than a decade, had his voter registration in Denton, Texas, temporarily canceled after being wrongly flagged. “After my right to vote was put in jeopardy by the system, I now have even more appreciation for my right to vote,” Nel said. “And I plan on voting in every single possible election, no matter how small, for the foreseeable future.”

The judge noted that “states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.”

Legal and Political Implications

The ruling is a major setback for President Trump’s efforts to nationalize election administration through federal databases. The SAVE overhaul was a key pillar of Trump’s second election executive order, signed in March 2026, which directed DHS to use the system to generate a list of eligible U.S. citizen voters in each state. Most of the administration’s other election-related executive actions — including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register and banning mail ballots received after Election Day — have also been blocked by courts.

Voting by noncitizens is already illegal and extremely rare, accounting for a tiny fraction of votes cast, multiple studies and state reviews have found.

James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, criticized the ruling on social media, saying, “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 in a statement that it would “continue to aggressively defend President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and DHS’s use of the SAVE system to verify citizenship,” as CBS News reported.

Voting rights groups celebrated the decision. “Today’s decision is a resounding victory for voters,” said Marcia Johnson, chief of activation and justice for the League of Women Voters, one of the plaintiffs. “Efforts to create a federal voter database to facilitate voter purges threaten the fundamental right at the heart of our democracy.”

What the Ruling Does and Doesn’t Do

The ruling does not eliminate the SAVE program itself, which has existed since 1986. It blocks the Trump administration’s 2025 overhaul and the use of the expanded system for voter verification. The judge found that Congress had expressly prohibited the centralization of Americans’ personal identifying information that the overhaul created.

Nikhel Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which represents plaintiffs, said the ruling reinforces that “an unlawful, unreliable system needs to be shut down unless and until Congress authorizes it.”

What’s Next

The ruling is subject to appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. States that have been using the revamped SAVE system must now adjust their voter roll maintenance procedures. The decision could also strengthen legal challenges by voters who were removed, flagged, or placed under review by the system. A separate lawsuit challenging Texas’ use of SAVE remains pending in federal court in Austin.

For now, the ruling leaves the future of the expanded SAVE system uncertain — and provides what Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former White House democracy advisor, called “incremental reassurance” for voters who feared being inaccurately singled out.

“It stops the use of a deeply flawed process to cause trouble for real eligible citizens,” Levitt said.