American Oversight Sues ICE and DOJ for Records on Sensitive Voter Data Collection and Sharing
Our lawsuit seeks transparency about the federal effort to collect voter data and to reportedly share it with immigration enforcement.
Tuesday, American Oversight filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the agencies failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that could shed light on how DOJ is collecting voter data from states — including Americans’ sensitive personal information — and how that information is being accessed or used by ICE.
Experts and voting-rights advocates have raised serious concerns about the privacy and security implications of the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to compile sensitive voter information, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security data. The administration has offered little explanation of how it will safeguard this highly sensitive information. Additionally, legal experts have raised a range of privacy and security concerns about the federal government’s efforts to construct a centralized database of voter records.
Those concerns are heightened by a broader push within the administration to aggregate sensitive personal data into a searchable national system — the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) expanded Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, a citizenship verification tool now available to election officials. Critics warn this could easily be repurposed for immigration enforcement or surveillance.
“The Trump administration is collecting vast amounts of sensitive voter information from states while building systems that allow that data to flow into federal immigration enforcement channels,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “When voter rolls are cross-checked against immigration databases that are not designed to determine voting eligibility, errors are inevitable — and eligible voters can be wrongly flagged or removed. That raises serious concerns about voter suppression ahead of the 2026 elections. When agencies fail to respond to lawful transparency requests about programs involving millions of Americans’ personal information, it raises serious questions about what they are trying to hide. The public deserves full transparency about how their data is being collected, stored, and shared.”
Last December, we submitted FOIA requests to DOJ and ICE seeking records about the collection, storage, and sharing of voter data obtained from state and local election officials. The requests sought policies, risk assessments, training materials, and records showing how often ICE has accessed voter data obtained by the DOJ. The requests also sought communications of senior DOJ officials related to immigration enforcement activities and voting, as well as internal policies governing how voter data is collected, maintained, and used.
Despite FOIA’s statutory deadlines, neither DOJ nor ICE has produced the requested records or issued final determinations regarding the requests, leaving the public in the dark about how the Trump administration may be using sensitive voter information. Our lawsuit asks the court to order the agencies to conduct adequate searches for responsive records and release all non-exempt documents responsive to our requests.
DOJ’s effort to acquire state voter data is far from the Trump administration’s first use of federal power that could influence upcoming elections. With a history of punishing states that refuse to do his bidding, the president has publicly pressed states to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm cycle, intervening directly in the redistricting process in states like Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina to lock in additional Republican seats rather than wait for the usual post-census period.
In October, we filed suit, along with Campaign Legal Center (CLC), against the Trump administration for failing to release records about new federal voter data maintenance efforts, including DHS’s overhaul of the SAVE system, which has evolved into a federal voter data system using various sources to flag potential noncitizens on state voter rolls — changes that could be used to justify large-scale voter purges and disenfranchise eligible voters. The administration has provided no explanation of how the system operates or what safeguards exist to protect Americans’ voter information from improper use.
Today’s lawsuit builds on our ongoing efforts to ensure transparency and accountability surrounding threats to democratic institutions and voter access.