{"id":16489,"date":"2026-06-23T16:21:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=16489"},"modified":"2026-06-23T16:21:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:21:54","slug":"judge-blocks-trumps-use-of-revamped-immigration-database-for-voter-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=16489","title":{"rendered":"Judge blocks Trump’s use of revamped immigration database for voter checks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans\u2019 sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll 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,\u201d Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. \u201cThis Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans\u2019 personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program \u201cknew that the database violates those statutory protections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision is a major legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on having noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics had referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,\u201d James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DHS referred to his post as its comment on the ruling. The Department of Justice said in an emailed statement that it would \u201ccontinue to aggressively defend President Trump\u2019s immigration enforcement agenda and DHS\u2019s use of the SAVE system to verify citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting by noncitizens was already rare
The executive order seeking to create a national voter list is among numerous steps Trump has taken during his second term to try to overhaul the way elections are run. He also has tried to force voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, ban mail ballots from counting if they are received after Election Day and prohibit the Postal Service from mailing ballots to people not on an approved list of voters. Most of those steps have been blocked by various courts, in part because the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to set election rules, but provides no such power to the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting by noncitizens is already illegal and punishable as a potential felony that could lead to deportation. It also is rare, accounting for just a tiny fraction of those on state voter rolls,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. At least 25 states used it to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Nel was one of those whose registrations were wrongly flagged. The South Africa native became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago but had his voter registration in Denton, Texas, north of Dallas, canceled temporarily last year after Texas ran its voter file through SAVE. The check wrongly identified him as a potential noncitizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope others can see this fight and not take their right to vote for granted,\u201d he said in a text message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":16490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2183,1708,1724],"class_list":["post-16489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-blocks","tag-judge","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nJudge blocks Trump's use of revamped immigration database for voter checks - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=16489\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Judge blocks Trump's use of revamped immigration database for voter checks - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used. 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