While Congress Sits On Election Integrity Bill, Trump Admin Takes Action

On Nov. 28, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security entered a settlement to resolve litigation with four states. The lawsuit was originally brought against the Biden administration over its alleged stonewalling of election authorities seeking federal records necessary to rid their voter rolls of suspected noncitizens.

Once the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida signs off on the settlement, election integrity will be strengthened not only in the Sunshine State, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana — its co-plaintiffs — but nationwide.

It marks the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration has taken to enable states to ensure that only citizens are voting — efforts made vital in the aftermath of the Biden-led illegal immigration invasion, and with Congress yet to pass the SAVE Act, which would require registrants to provide documentary proof of citizenship.

Under the settlement, the federal government affirmed its pledge to dramatically increase the capability, functionality, and accessibility of DHS’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements or SAVE program. Historically, SAVE (not to be confused with the pending bill of the same name) allowed authorities to search for the citizenship and immigration statuses of applicants for benefits or licenses.

But the system was subject to a variety of limitations. Each query required state authorities and other users to include both biographic information and a federally issued immigration number — a number that many states do not possess. States could only cross-reference data with DHS’s immigration records, not compare it with information held by other agencies that might reveal citizenship status. They could only run queries on one individual at a time and had to pay the federal government for those queries. And federal authorities only granted a limited number of states access to the SAVE tool in the first place, with some allegedly finding their requests slow-walked — akin to the charges leveled by the four state plaintiffs in their litigation with DHS.