DHS to ‘Soft Launch’ New Tool to Hunt for Noncitizens on Rolls 

The Trump administration is asking select states to help “soft launch” the latest new feature of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) revamped citizenship verification program. 

The invitation, which came in an email sent last week by DHS to North Carolina’s GOP-controlled election board, appears to signal the administration’s latest step to encourage states to use data managed by the federal government to hunt for noncitizens on the rolls.

In the August 21 email, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) official invited North Carolina to participate in the limited rollout, which the official called “an exciting opportunity.”

The email was sent to the North Carolina board’s associate general counsel and posted online as part of the agenda for a Wednesday board meeting. 

“This soft launch is by invitation only—we are not announcing its availably [sic] for widespread use at this time,” wrote the USCIS official, Timothy Benz. “SAVE needs to throttle the intake of these cases at the outset, as we know the demand will be high and want to ensure the system’s ability to meet the increased demand. We are prioritizing your state due to prior participation and engagements between our agencies.”

At Wednesday’s regularly-scheduled public meeting, the North Carolina State Board of Elections tabled discussion of participating in the DHS soft launch after returning from a lengthy closed session. 

After returning to public session and voting on other matters, board chair Francis X. De Luca (R) said the board would “skip” the SAVE agenda item. 

“We are going to put that off for another day. We’re not dealing with that issue,” De Luca said. “We discussed some of the [legal] details in closed session and decided that we weren’t ready to deal with that issue.”

The email requested North Carolina upload their citizenship confirmation request to SAVE on Wednesday, and provide in advance the number of registrations the Board would upload in bulk for verification. 

By tabling the matter, the Board effectively declined the offer to test the system’s new capabilities, although the email did say rescheduling may be possible. 

President Donald Trump ordered DHS in March to make the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program available for free to state election officials for confirming the citizenship status of registered voters. SAVE uses various federal databases to flag whether someone is a non-citizen, and was originally developed to check eligibility for federal benefits programs through one-by-one queries. 

Since the order, CIS integrated data from the Social Security Administration and added the ability to perform citizenship checks in bulk. The latest upgrade allows election officials to use just the last four digits of a social security number — rather than requiring all nine — along with the individual’s name and date of birth when submitting a citizenship check request. 

Under the federal Help Americans Vote Act, when someone registers to vote, state election officers must ask for either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number. Allowing election officials to use SAVE with just the last four social security number digits, rather than all nine, would let them rely on readily available data to use SAVE. 

State election officials were invited to the White House last month where CIS officials pitched them on an untested solution for a nearly nonexistent problem. Before that, the administration provided a briefing on using SAVE  to the Election Integrity Network, a far-right anti-voting group founded by lawyer Cleta Mitchell.  

Using SAVE for purging voter registration rolls has led voting-rights groups and Democratic officials to question whether DHS has complied with federal data laws, which generally require federal agencies to give public notice before using personal data in novel ways. 

The expansion also comes amid renewed concerns about the Trump administration’s cybersecurity lapses. The Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a database with every American’s name, date of birth and social security number to an unsecured cloud server in June, according to a recent whistleblowing complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.

According to CIS records, twenty states, as well as a few dozen local election offices, are currently registered to use the SAVE program for voter roll maintenance.   

The Trump administration’s attempt to work with North Carolina’s elections board comes as no surprise. 

After the GOP lost the North Carolina gubernatorial race in 2024, the Republican-dominated legislature transferred the power to appoint members of the elections board from the Democratic governor to the Republican state auditor. That maneuver led to Republicans controlling three of the Board’s five seats.  

The Republicans on the board quickly ousted its longtime executive director, a respected nonpartisan election administrator, and replaced her with Sam Hayes, a GOP operative who was serving as chief counsel to the House Speaker. 

Under Hayes, the board coordinated with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in response to a lawsuit filed by the DOJ aiming to require the state to tighten its rules on what identifying information votes must provide. Voting advocates have expressed concern that the board’s new requirement that some voters provide additional information could lead valid voters to be removed from the rolls and disenfranchised.  

The board also has issued new rules restricting student voting. And Hayes played a key role in drafting a restrictive new voting bill that state lawmakers plan to take up this year, which includes a provision barring election officials from encouraging voting.

Late Update: After publication, a spokesman for CIS responded to Democracy Docket’s request for comment.

“USCIS is committed to safeguarding election integrity by ensuring that only American citizens vote in federal elections,” CIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser wrote in an email. “The SAVE application is a critical tool for state and local governments to access information to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country. It’s no wonder many states have quickly adopted it, and we continue to promote the tool to other states and counties not using SAVE. We look forward to continued optimization efforts and implementing more updates to SAVE.”

A spokesman for the N.C. State Board of Elections also provided comment after publication, offering further elucidation on why the board did not vote on the CIS offer. “State Board staff are currently working with our federal partners on agreements to ensure that proper safeguards would be in place to protect and secure the data, if a decision is ultimately made to use the service,” a spokesman wrote in an email.