AAA Newsletter (10/7/26)

Hello AAA! Here’s your update on recent APIDA political issues.

I’m Allison, AAA’s News Chair. This semester, we’ve decided to revamp the formatting of the newsletter to highlight one APIDA issue in a longer piece, on top of our usual news highlights. We hope to use this space to provide a fuller story on current events or discuss important historical issues! For this edition…

The Trump Administration Revives SAVE, Used to Verify Citizenship

On Sep. 25, 2026, the Supreme Court permitted the Trump Administration to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements data system—also called, SAVE. SAVE had been previously blocked in lower courts in June of 2026, on the grounds of privacy laws, among other reasons. However, the Administration had called the Supreme Court to pause the lower court’s block, so SAVE could be used during the upcoming midterms. In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court allowed for SAVE to be used for individual checks on voter rolls—but not mass removals of individuals from voter rolls.

SAVE has existed within the DHS since the 1980s, as a rudimentary database of citizenship. As concerns over noncitizen voting have risen in recent years, some elections officials attempted to reference SAVE to confirm the citizenship of voters. However, this was not to much of a success: SAVE was difficult to search and featured significant portions of incomplete data.

Since Trump’s return to office, the Administration has been interested in expanding SAVE and developing it specifically with the goal of being an easily searchable database for election officials. On May 22, 2025, Social Security data was combined with SAVE for easier look-up.

However, the accuracy of this data-matching process still remains contested. The existing data on voting and on citizenship was not gathered with the intention of being combined—and thus, any messiness in the datasets might lead to many inaccuracies. Further, because so little is being disclosed about the process, trust in SAVE is unsteady.

With Election Day on Nov. 3, 2026, the Trump Administration has become increasingly invested in noncitizen voting. Noncitizen voting has certainly been a topic of Trump’s for a long time—all the way since 2016, when he claimed noncitizen votes lost him the popular vote. However, it has become a central focus again, as Trump has signed several executive orders over the past months involving citizenship documentation.

In contrast to the Trump Administration’s claims though, no audit has found noncitizen voting to be a major concern.

The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) investigated noncitizen voting in July of 2025. It reported that most cases of noncitizen voting emerged “from misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications about complex voter data.” No coordinated or widespread efforts were found.

In fact, the worst cases of noncitizen voting in states only amounted to a few tenths of a percent of all eligible voters. Some claim that any population of noncitizen votes creates a problem for elections, even if small—and this has largely been the motivation for SAVE.

But regardless, the prevalence of noncitizen voting has been widely overstated by the Trump Administration.

In contrast, voter turnout remains a significant issue across the U.S. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2024, the national voter turnout rate was at 64%—the second highest turnout since 1908. Further, across the past three presidential elections, 26% of eligible voters did not cast a single ballot. Among Asian Americans, 33% did not cast a ballot in the past three presidential elections.

A major point of contention comes from the fact that SAVE has erroneously flagged eligible U.S. citizens to be removed from voter rolls. Texas already combed through its voter rolls using SAVE in 2025, and had initially flagged 2,724 of its 18 million voters as noncitizens. But after giving these individuals 30 days to prove their citizenship, 20% were found to be citizens and were reinstated.

Having to provide documentation of citizenship could end up disenfranchising many US citizens, including people of color, young voters, low-income Americans, and rural Americans. A 2023 report found that 9% of eligible Americans do not have citizenship documents readily accessible. Sometimes documents are lost or stolen, are stored in difficult to access places, or too expensive to obtain. Among the Asian American community, these same access issues and any language barriers only emphasizes that Texas’ method—sending just one email to individuals after SAVE flags them—could cause disproportionate harm to voters.

While the Supreme Court has not permitted SAVE to be used for mass removals, it remains unclear what the position is for potential noncitizens on voter rolls—and the Supreme Court’s decision on this will likely not come until after midterm elections.

Read more here.

More in the News...

2. New Bill Cuts Medicaid Coverage for Many Immigrants

On October 1, 2026, cuts to the health insurance program went into place. These cuts were a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s federal spending cuts and crackdown on immigration. It is estimated that 100,000 people will become insured due to these cuts. Many recent immigrants will be impacted by these cuts—even those who applied for permanent residency years ago and have been waiting for a response from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Further, many refugees, people granted asylum, people granted parole, and even some victims of domestic violence will be impacted by these cuts.

Read more here.

3. The Supreme Court is Set to Review Trump’s Detention Policies

On October 1, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed to review the Trump Administration’s detention policies—especially that of indefinitely detaining immigrants who had crossed the border illegally years ago. Prior to the current administration, migrants could be released on bond after a hearing before a judge. After all, more than two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for over a decade.

Further, the Court has agreed to review the Administration’s policy of deporting individuals to countries they had no relation to, considered “third country removals.” One of the first individuals to be deported to a third country was Phone Chomsavanh, a Laotian citizen who was sent to Eswatini in July 2025. Only just this October 5, 2026, Chomsavanh was released from the Eswatini detention facility, having served 14 months of confinement, on top of serving his full time for criminal conviction in the U.S. He is now being formally repatriated to Laos.

Read more here.