TOPEKA, KAN. — The Trump administration has run at least 67 million voter registrations through a verification program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to check citizenship status. The checks were processed through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, which was created under an immigration law directing the department to help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens.

About 60 million of those registration checks identified roughly 24,000 potential noncitizens, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the checks identified about 350,000 people who appear to have died. Of the roughly 67 million registrations checked overall, about 384,000 people were identified as potentially deceased. North Carolina's State Board of Elections, which is controlled by Republicans, said its check alone identified about 34,000 registered voters who are potentially deceased.

At least 25 states have used SAVE to check their voter rolls since April 2025, and more than 1,300 agencies use the system, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said. The Department of Justice has pushed states to hand over unredacted voter information for mass checks through the program and has sued states that refuse, saying the government is trying to ensure compliance with federal law and accurate voter lists. President Donald Trump has called for a federal list of verified voters, and his administration has federalized certain election functions and promoted messaging that elections are marred by noncitizen voting.

State procedures for flagged voters vary. Texas, which ran a SAVE check on its 18 million voter registrations, is supposed to give people with flagged registrations 30 days to prove they are properly registered. A new Ohio law requires local election boards to promptly cancel the registrations of people identified as noncitizens during required monthly checks. Kansas law enacted this year requires county officials to list flagged registrations as "in suspense" or "pending" until resolved; a flagged person may still vote, but the ballot is set aside for further review and might not be counted. North Carolina will require county elections boards to give people whose registrations are challenged a hearing before they can be canceled. "If a voter is wrongly removed, by the time they learn about it and correct it, they may miss their opportunity to vote in that election," said Freda Levenson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

Anthony Nel, a native of South Africa who became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago, had his voter registration in Denton, Texas, temporarily canceled last fall while he was waiting for a new passport. He received a letter in October informing him he had been identified as a potential noncitizen through a SAVE check and had 30 days to prove his eligibility, but he missed the deadline because of the time it took to get a new passport. Nel is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia against the Department of Justice challenging the SAVE program.

Domingo Garcia, a 68-year-old lawyer and voting rights activist in Dallas who has been voting regularly for 50 years, most recently in Texas's March 3 primary, had his voter registration canceled by Dallas election officials without explanation. "I should not have been on any lists," Garcia said.