by Nicole Silverio
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could use an expanded database to remove illegal aliens and non-citizens from voter rolls.
The ruling allows DHS to use its expanded voter citizenship verification system, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), which allowed the administration to use Social Security records to verify voters’ citizenship. The ruling will likely not have a major impact on the midterm elections since most states are prohibited from removing voters from their rolls within 90 days of an election, according to The Associated Press.
The SAVE program was established to mandate that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to non-citizens. The administration expanded its abilities in 2025 so agencies could take steps to better ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in elections, causing at least 67 million registrations to be scanned.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden-appointed judge, blocked the administration’s usage of the tool in June, arguing it could wrongly remove citizens from the voter rolls and violated Americans’ privacy rights.
The high court found that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 allowed DHS to gather information about citizenship and immigration from other federal agencies.
“Under section 1373(c), the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters. The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task,” the majority wrote.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” Jackson wrote.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Sept. 18 that it charged 16 people in seven states with illegally voting, registering to vote through false citizenship claims, and related fraud. Prosecutors brought cases in Massachusetts, Texas, Idaho, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an illegal alien named Mariana Alexandra Dewey on Sept. 1 for allegedly voting illegally in the 2024 presidential election.
Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration announced in August that 220 noncitizens had a history of illegally voting in the state, according to The New Jersey Globe.
In response to the ruling, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the Supreme Court the “MAGA Supreme Court,” which he noted struck again, “putting its thumb on the scale for Trump’s election-rigging agenda.”
“Elon Musk’s DOGE-overhauled SAVE database is ridden with errors. With this decision, thousands of American voters could be wrongly stripped from voter rolls and prevented from voting this election season,” Schumer said.
“Donald Trump’s agenda has failed. His attempts to cheat will fail. And the voters will hold him accountable for all of it in November,” he added.
Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez said, “The SAVE program is a Trump administration voter-suppression tactic. It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court decided to capitulate to and enable an authoritarian, again. States must hold the line and do everything in their power to protect voting rights and our democracy!”
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Nicole Silverio is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
