As Texas embraces federal immigration database to verify voter citizenship, some experts are worried

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This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletters here.

Texas election officials are praising a revamped federal immigration database that they’ve begun using to validate the citizenship of registered voters.

Texas is one of the earliest states to start using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ overhauled SAVE database to check voters’ eligibility. That comes after the Trump administration, in its campaign to eliminate the risk of noncitizen voting, made the database free for states to use and easier to search.

But some experts and watchdogs warn that the changes haven’t necessarily made the system more reliable. They say the administration hasn’t publicly released enough information about it, which makes it difficult to assess how complete and accurate the search results are, and whether there are enough safeguards to protect people’s privacy and voting rights.

Texas officials have repeatedly suggested in recent years that the state has a problem with noncitizens registering to vote, citing discoveries of allegedly large numbers of noncitizens on voter rolls. But the statements and numbers haven’t always held up under scrutiny, and the state has had to revamp its verification process after many of people identified as potential noncitizens turned out to be naturalized citizens who were flagged due to outdated data.

The Trump administration has promoted SAVE as a source of real-time information on immigration status. With the changes it made to the system, state election officials can now upload voter registration records in bulk for verification, instead of one by one, or search records individually by Social Security number — and they don’t have to pay for it.

As of May 23, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office used the SAVE database to attempt to check at least 1,657 records, according to public records obtained by the nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight and shared with Votebeat and The Texas Tribune. Nearly 300 of those searches returned errors, the records show, which the Secretary of State’s Office said occurred during testing and may have been caused by duplicate records or information in the wrong format.

In June, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced that after further checking results produced by SAVE, it had referred 33 potential noncitizens for investigation by the Texas Attorney General’s Office — people it said had voted in the November 2024 general election. More than 11 million Texans cast ballots in that election.

“The SAVE is the most current and accurate database available to states to verify citizenship, and we appreciate the Trump Administration for giving us access to it free of charge,” said Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. “It is one of many data sets we use to ensure accurate voter rolls.”

In a June call with election officials from across the state, according to audio obtained and reviewed by Votebeat, state Elections Director Christina Adkins said the tool has “really accurate data” and helped her office validate the citizenship status of “a ton” of naturalized citizens, confirming they are eligible to be on the rolls and cast ballots.

Adkins didn’t say on the call where the people identified as potential noncitizens were registered. But she said her office took careful steps and reached out to counties before referring the cases to the attorney general to “make sure there weren’t any mistakes.”

American Oversight obtained a copy of the agreement between the Secretary of State’s Office and federal authorities on the use of SAVE. Under the agreement, Texas must provide registrants who “are not verified” as U.S. citizens by SAVE with the opportunity to use the state’s existing process to appeal and correct the records prior to a final decision, “if necessary.”

Concerns about using SAVE for verifying voter eligibility

The SAVE database has been available since the 1980s, primarily for state and local government agencies to check people’s immigration status and determine whether they’re eligible for licenses and other benefits. But until recently, it was impractical as a way to verify voters’ eligibility. Election officials could check only one record at a time, and had to pay for each search.

Election officials have said a tool like SAVE could be useful for determining voter eligibility — assuming it’s accurate. But data privacy and legal experts are concerned about adapting SAVE for the purpose of maintaining voter rolls. They have questioned the accuracy and reliability of the data, given how quickly the system changes were made this year, as well as how the federal government is using data uploaded by states.

John Davisson, director of litigation with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy watchdog group, said SAVE shouldn't be used for purposes it wasn't originally designed for, especially without robust scrutiny and input from both Congress and the public.

“If there's a sort of mission creep, if it starts to expand, that's upending the expectations of the people who approved and created the system in the first place,” Davisson said. “It's upending the expectations of the public and the people who are submitting to verification against this database. And that's a privacy violation.”

Justin Levitt, a constitutional law expert who worked in the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the U.S. CIS, hasn’t yet issued the public notice required under the Privacy Act, a federal law that regulates the collection, use, and dissemination of information about individuals by federal agencies. DHS, he said, should be able to tell the public how it is using the data that’s being uploaded by the states.

“The whole point of the Privacy Act is I shouldn't have to guess at that answer, that they should tell us first: What are you planning on? How do you plan on using this data?” he said in an interview with Votebeat.

In a joint statement last week, Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Gary Peters of Michigan, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon said the SAVE overhaul raises privacy questions that require more documentation from DHS.

They said they were concerned that data quality issues may cause “state and local officials who rely on the program to receive false positives or incomplete results.”

American Oversight, the watchdog group that obtained the documents shared with Votebeat and the Tribune, said that even with the protocol for notifying registrants who are flagged, it was still concerned about whether voters were adequately protected from any flawed data matches. It pointed to the language in the agreement between the Secretary of State’s Office and DHS that called for outreach to voters “if necessary.”

“This lack of transparency — combined with vague, watered-down safeguards — creates real risk for wrongful voter purges and disenfranchisement,” said Chioma Chukwu, the group’s executive director. “That’s why public scrutiny is so essential.”

Maintaining voter rolls is up to county registrars

The agreement between DHS and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, does not address whether the federal government is retaining data uploaded by state officials. U.S. CIS did not respond to a specific question about that, but in an emailed statement, the agency called SAVE "a critical tool for state and local governments to access information to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country.”

The agency added that “SAVE does not kick eligible voters off the voter rolls.”

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office can’t add voters to the rolls or remove them. That is up to county voter registrars, who are required by state law to conduct voter list maintenance daily. Voter registrars verify the eligibility of voters through multiple records, from sources including the Bureau of Vital Statistics, district courts, and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

According to the state election code, if voter registrars believe a person is not eligible, the registrar must notify the person in writing that their registration status is being reviewed. The notice has to include a request for information relevant to determining the voter’s eligibility for registration, such as proof of citizenship, age, or address verification. The voter then has 30 days to respond before their registration is canceled.

Adkins said the state is talking to U.S. CIS about whether the SAVE database can be used more broadly. For instance, she said, the data could be used to validate the registration and eligibility of thousands of other voters on the rolls beyond immigrants, and address other challenges to registration received by election officials.

Last year, county election departments across the state were flooded with formal challenges from activists questioning whether the registrations of tens of thousands of voters were valid. The challenges created backlogs and burdened election officials as they prepared for a presidential election.

“I personally think that it would be fantastic if we can utilize that in a way to give validations to voters,” she said, “so that there is no cloud of suspicion over their registration, so that it can't be challenged at a later date.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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