Class action lawsuit alleges data consolidation within USCIS is illegal

A class action lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that the Trump administration’s creation of new databases consolidating sensitive information from various government agencies violates the Privacy Act of 1974 and the U.S. Constitution. 

A coalition represented by Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, and the Fair Elections Center is asking the court to block the efforts to combine various sets of government data in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services systems.

They point to changes in USCIS’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE, which is meant to help governments verify immigration status. Several media reports detail that SAVE is now working as a searchable citizenship data system, with data from the Social Security Administration, following a reworking of the system at DHS alongside the Department of Government Efficiency. Some states are using it to check voter rolls in the name of voter fraud, as USCIS itself has announced.

“These dramatic changes far exceed the SAVE system’s limited authorized scope and functionality, which previously did not allow bulk searches or queries of U.S.-born citizens. Nor did it previously pool from SSA data or include any search-by-SSN function,” the filing reads. 

The lawsuit filing also alleges that USCIS has created a data lake that combines sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents across different agencies, including the IRS, SSA and Department of Health and Human Services, “in defiance of multiple laws.”

"This country was founded on the principle that government has no business arbitrarily intruding in our private affairs," John Davisson, EPIC's director of litigation, said in a statement. "Yet this administration is trampling on our privacy at the grandest scale, illegally hoarding our sensitive personal information and threatening our most cherished rights. The law is clear: no national data bank. Together we'll put a stop to this in court."

This is the latest privacy-focused lawsuit centered on the activities of DOGE. Among the questions that have come to the forefront of the cases are whether those suing have standing to bring their claims.

One of the cases has shown up before the Supreme Court already, which granted the government's request in June for an emergency stay of a district court’s injunction blocking DOGE from accessing data at the Social Security Administration. 

In another case, an appeals court ruled in August that DOGE can continue to access sensitive information at the Departments of Education and Treasury, as well as the Office of Personnel Management. The plaintiffs likely lacked standing to sue, that appeals court said in overturning a lower court’s injunction blocking DOGE access. 

One district court has granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction against DOGE access to records at OPM, finding in June that the case likely had standing and was likely to succeed.