An immigrant rights group filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday against the Trump administration to block the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Justice Department from using federal databases to target naturalized citizens eligible to vote. Filed on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, the lawsuit alleges that these actions interfere with fair elections, amount to voter intimidation, and constitute an “attack on the freedom to vote”. Angelica Salas, the coalition’s executive director, and Xavier Becerra, acting as a senior adviser to the voting project, condemned the administration’s efforts to intimidate naturalized U.S. citizens.
Flaws in Database Matching and Government Actions:
The lawsuit states that comparing voter rolls with undisclosed government databases can produce inaccurate results and erroneous data due to outdated information and errors, which disproportionately affect naturalized voters. Furthermore, the complaint highlights that Congress has never authorized such activities and has prohibited invading voter privacy through these types of government data matches. Despite actual voting by noncitizens being rare, the Trump administration has targeted noncitizen voting alleging potential fraud ahead of midterms, pushing for citizen-verified mail ballots and demanding detailed voter data across multiple states.
The SAVE Program and State-Level Pushback:
A federal judge previously ruled that a revamped version of a federal tool known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program could no longer be used because it aggregated sensitive personal data that could wrongly purge voters. By May, the administration had run millions of registrations at least 67 million, primarily from Republican-controlled states through the SAVE program, flagging tens of thousands as potential noncitizens or deceased individuals. The DHS defended its actions, stating it cross-referenced publicly available state voter rolls with known illegal aliens to secure elections and prevent vote dilution. Specifically, the lawsuit asks the court to declare the administration’s actions unconstitutional, rescind the letter requesting California’s voter information, and halt the review of California’s voter list, where DHS claimed without evidence that 190,832 noncitizens might be on the rolls. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber expressed serious doubts regarding the reliability of the federal data and accuracy of their claims.
