Three Democratic U.S. senators are raising concerns about a searchable citizenship data system developed under the Trump administration, warning that its use could lead to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters.
NPR was the first news outlet to report in detail about the tool, which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says can be used to verify the citizenship of most people listed on state voter rolls if a Social Security number, name and date of birth are provided.
The Department of Homeland Security system links a network of federal immigration databases with Social Security Administration data. That integration means county and state election officials can check the citizenship of not only foreign-born naturalized citizens, but also U.S.-born citizens for the first time.
The Trump administration has been combining and linking government data sets on Americans in unprecedented ways, and there are questions about what the federal government could do with the voter roll data states share.
Legal and privacy experts told NPR last month they were alarmed that the new data system — which is an upgrade to an existing USCIS platform known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — was being rolled out quickly without a transparent process or the public notices typically required for such projects by federal privacy laws.
Democratic U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Gary Peters of Michigan and Jeff Merkley of Oregon raised that point in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday.
"Public transparency and assurances that the Department is appropriately protecting citizens' rights, including privacy, is extremely important," the senators wrote. "Unfortunately, DHS has not issued any of the routine and required documentation about the program's operations and safeguards or issued any public notice or notice to Congress."
The senators also raised questions about the accuracy of the tool and whether it could mistakenly flag eligible citizens as ineligible to vote.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, President Trump and his allies pushed the baseless narrative that Democrats had allowed migrants to enter the country so they would illegally vote in large numbers and steal the election. There's no evidence of such a scheme, and state audits have found noncitizen votes to be rare. Research has found many such cases are due to noncitizens mistakenly believing they were allowed to vote in federal elections.
Nevertheless, Republicans at the federal and state levels have pushed for new verification steps to ensure noncitizens are not casting ballots.
In Trump's March 25 executive order on voting, he called on DHS to give states "access to appropriate systems" without cost for verifying the citizenship of voters on their rolls. The same order told the attorney general to prioritize prosecuting noncitizens who register or vote.
USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement last month that the upgrades to the SAVE system were a "game changer."
"USCIS is moving quickly to eliminate benefit and voter fraud among the alien population," Tragesser said.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the senators' letter.
Though DHS has so far shared only limited information about the new tool with the public, a staffer from the agency presented on it privately to the Election Integrity Network, a Trump-aligned group known for pushing false and misleading election fraud narratives.
The senators wrote they were "gravely concerned" that DHS "has not shared information with lawmakers and the public, but did reportedly provide a private advance briefing about the changes to the database to the Election Integrity Network, an organization founded by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election."
The letter calls on USCIS to brief the staff of the Senate committees on Rules and Administration and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and provide all materials shared with the Election Integrity Network.
The senators are also asking Noem to provide answers to detailed questions, such as whether the agency provided public notice before launching the data system, how the tool's accuracy was tested, how personal data is being safeguarded and whether the federal agency will retain voter roll data.
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