On November 4th, Tuesday, California, New York, and four other states held important elections. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), also known as Immigration Office, announced the day before that it is continuing to upgrade its SAVE system to better assist states in verifying the identities of registered voters for election purposes.
The immigration agency stated in a press release on November 3rd that they are continually updating and expanding their Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. States can now verify the citizenship status of voters registered for federal elections using only the last four digits of their Social Security Number (SSN), rather than the full nine digits.
Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for USCIS, mentioned in the press release, “USCIS is committed to removing barriers that impede national election security. By enabling states to efficiently verify voter eligibility, we adhere to and emphasize the fundamental principle that ‘American elections are exclusive to American citizens.’ We encourage all federal, state, and local agencies to use the SAVE system.”
The agency emphasized that this action is part of the implementation of the Executive Order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” issued by President Trump on March 25th of this year.
SAVE system, established in 1986, initially required states to verify the identities of foreign nationals eligible for U.S. benefits through the system. According to the SAVE introduction on the immigration agency’s website, 1,200 local agencies nationwide use SAVE for identity verification of non-citizen benefit applicants.
Starting in 2025 under the Trump administration’s Executive Order, the system incorporated Social Security Numbers (SSN) and expanded its functionality to assist in verifying voter identities.
The immigration agency clarified on its website that the SAVE system is not the exclusive means of determining U.S. citizenship. It is just one of several methods used by voter registration verification agencies to confirm American citizenship.
The enhanced functionality allows state governments to conduct bulk verification of citizenship status on their voter rolls, and this service is provided free of charge to the states.
However, not all states have chosen to utilize this feature. Currently, 26 states have signed or are considering signing Memorandums of Agreement to utilize SAVE for voter eligibility verification.
The optimized SAVE system has enabled state election agencies to submit over 46 million voter verification queries and federal agencies to submit over 110 million queries to assist in verifying eligibility for federal benefits. These measures, along with identity verification for new benefit applications, have conducted a total of over 205 million identity verification queries as of October 2025. In comparison, only 25 million identity verification queries related to benefit applications were processed in the entire year of 2024.
Texas is one of the 26 states using the SAVE system to verify voter identities. On October 20th, Texas Secretary of State, Jane Nelson, declared that the comprehensive comparison of Texas voter registration lists with the citizenship data in the SAVE database had been completed.
According to the announcement, after submitting the voter list of over 18 million Texas voters for comparison with the SAVE database, 2,724 potential non-citizen voters were identified.
The Secretary of State’s office stated that they have provided this voter data to Texas counties, and county governments and voter registration offices will investigate the eligibility of these voters. Those identified as non-citizens and who have voted in Texas elections will be referred to the state Attorney General’s office based on the Texas Election Code for removal from the voter rolls.
Nelson said, “Only eligible American citizens should participate in our elections. The Trump administration decided for the first time to allow states direct and free access to this database, changing the rules of the game. We greatly appreciate the collaboration of the federal government in verifying citizenship in voter rolls and maintaining accurate voter lists.”
On September 30th, citizen advocacy groups, including the League of Women Voters, filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the procedures using the SAVE system to verify voter identities. The plaintiffs accused the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other relevant agencies of expanding the use of the SAVE system without proper public notice and comment procedures, violating two federal regulations.
The lawsuit argued that incorporating data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) into SAVE made it a citizen-centered file lacking transparency and oversight, violating the Privacy Act of 1974. It further claimed that DHS failed to issue the required public notice before making significant modifications to the SAVE system, violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) regarding rulemaking procedures.
On October 7th, the plaintiffs filed a motion requesting the court to issue a temporary restraining order to immediately halt the Trump administration’s use of the voter identity verification function of SAVE. Following a hearing on October 28th, the court asked the plaintiffs to provide evidence of the harm the SAVE system is causing to eligible voters.
In response, on October 29th, the League of Women Voters submitted supporting documents for the lawsuit by Christopher Davis, the director of the Travis County voter registration office in Texas.
Davis stated that when his office investigated the “non-citizen list” provided by the Texas Secretary of State, they found that 25% of the individuals on the list had registered in the Department of Public Safety (DPS) for a driver’s license, which requires proof of citizenship. Therefore, these registered voters should be eligible voters.
Davis mentioned that he understood similar issues were encountered by other counties, but the Secretary of State’s office could not explain why individuals who registered with DPS and provided proof of citizenship were marked as non-citizens in the SAVE database.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the judge has yet to make a ruling on the case.