Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <DEPDOC>[Docket No. USCIS-2025-0337]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of a modified system of records. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposes to modify and reissue a DHS system of records notice (SORN) titled, “Department of Homeland Security/U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)-004 Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program (SAVE).” As described in this modified SORN, USCIS, an agency within DHS, collects and maintains records on applicants for public benefits, licenses, grants, governmental credentials, and other statutorily authorized purposes through the SAVE program. SAVE allows registered user agencies to verify the immigration status/category (“immigration status”) and U.S. citizenship (including for U.S. citizens by birth, naturalized and certain acquired citizens) of individuals applying for or receiving a public benefit, license or other authorized purpose (“benefit”). “Acquired citizenship” refers to U.S. citizenship conveyed to children through the naturalization of parents or, under certain circumstances, at birth to foreign-born children of U.S. citizens, provided certain conditions are met. DHS/USCIS is updating this SORN to include updates and modifications to the (1) purpose(s) of the system, (2) categories of individuals covered by the system, (3) categories of records in the system, (4) records source categories, and (5) routine uses of records maintained in the system. Additionally, this notice includes non-substantive changes to simplify the formatting and text of the previously published notice. This modified system will be included in DHS's inventory of record systems. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on or before December 1, 2025. This modified system will be effective upon publication. New or modified routine uses will be effective December 1, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by docket number USCIS-2025-0337 by one of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal e-Rulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-343-4010. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Roman Jankowski, Chief Privacy Officer, Privacy Office, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC 20528-0655. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number USCIS-2025-0337. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For general questions, please contact: Angela Y. Washington, 240-721-3705, Privacy Officer, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS Headquarters, 5900 Capital Gateway Dr., Camp Springs, MD 20746. For privacy questions, please contact: Roman Jankowski, (202) 343-1717, Chief Privacy Officer, Privacy Office, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC 20528-0655. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> In accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. 552a, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing to modify and reissue a current DHS SORN titled, “DHS/USCIS-004 Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program System of Records.” This modified SORN is being published to update the purpose of SAVE to include the addition of expanded search functionality for registered SAVE user agencies to verify the U.S. citizenship of U.S. citizens by birth and to clarify use of SAVE for voter verification. This SORN modification also clarifies and informs the public that SAVE has removed transaction charges for all state, local, tribal, and territorial government agencies that use the system. Federal agencies are still charged a fee to use SAVE. DHS/USCIS is adding individuals that are U.S. citizens by birth to the categories of individuals covered by the system. DHS/USCIS is updating the categories of records in the system to include collecting both full and truncated (last four digits) Social Security number (other than those collected on Form G-845, Verification Request), U.S. passport number, driver's license number, and information from the Social Security Administration. DHS/USCIS is revising the record source categories to add SSA-60-0058 Master Files of Social Security Number Holders, Social Security Number Applications, February 20, 2025 (90 FR 10025) and state or other national agencies that issue or maintain driver's license information. DHS/USCIS is amending the routine uses section of the SORN to include adding Routine Use L, to support sharing with Social Security Administration and other federal organizations, and Routine Use M, to support sharing with federal agencies ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the Department of Health and Human Services) to support auditing of federal programs administered by state, local, and tribal governments ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Medicaid). Additionally, this notice includes non-substantive changes, including reorganizing of categories of records, change in the use of terms such as from “derived” citizen/citizenship to “acquired” citizen/citizenship, and spelling out of form names from the previously published system of records notice. Consistent with DHS's information sharing mission, information stored in DHS/USCIS SAVE may be shared with other DHS Components that have a need to know of the information to carry out their national security, law enforcement, immigration, intelligence, or other homeland security functions. In addition, DHS/USCIS may share information with appropriate federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, foreign, or international government agencies consistent with the routine uses set forth in this system of records notice. Information in SAVE, including records submitted by the user agency, is not to be used for administrative (non-criminal) immigration enforcement purposes. <E T="03">See</E> Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), Public Law 99-603, Part C, Section 121(c)(1) (Nov. 6, 1986). This modified system will be included in DHS's inventory of record systems. USCIS administers SAVE. SAVE is an online intergovernmental service designed to help federal, state, territorial, tribal, local government agencies, benefit-granting agencies, other authorized entities ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Airport Operators under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Extension, Safety and Security Act of 2016), and licensing bureaus, as authorized by law (collectively, “SAVE user agencies”), determine the U.S. citizenship and immigration status of individuals within their jurisdiction for the purpose of granting benefits, licenses, and other lawful purposes. Uses of SAVE may include verification of immigration status or category and U.S citizenship, including U.S. citizens by birth as well as naturalized and certain acquired citizens, when issuing benefits such as Social Security numbers, public health care, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program; conducting background investigations, armed forces recruitment, REAL ID compliance; or any other purpose authorized by law, including verification of registrants and registered voters in voter registration and voter list maintenance processes. Prior to accessing SAVE, an agency must register as a user and enter into a Memorandum of Agreement with DHS/USCIS. The prospective user provides the legal authorities requiring or permitting verification of immigration status or U.S. citizenship as part of issuing a benefit. SAVE does not determine a benefit applicant's eligibility for a specific benefit. Only the user agency makes that determination. A typical SAVE verification involves a registered federal, state, territorial, tribal, or local government benefit or license-granting agency verifying the immigration status or U.S. citizenship of a benefit applicant. SAVE is not a database for immigration status and citizenship information. Rather, SAVE accesses the USCIS Verification Data Integration Service which searches multiple government databases or systems to provide a SAVE response. The initial SAVE response is derived from information contained in government systems accessed by SAVE using information from U.S. government-issued documents, such as a Social Security card, Permanent Resident Card (often referred to as a Green Card) or an Employment Authorization Document. For a SAVE user agency to create a SAVE case, the agency must collect and enter certain identifiers from the benefit applicant's identity document(s). The verification process is driven by identifiers generally located on immigration documents ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Alien Registration Number (Alien Number or A-Number)/USCIS Number, Card Number/I-797 Receipt Number, or Citizenship/Naturalization Certificate Number) or other government-issued documents ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> a Social Security number). The identifier presented by the individual determines the verification process. SAVE user agencies input data elements pertaining to the applicant through SAVE. SAVE then connects to the internal USCIS Verification Data Integration Service to process the r ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 51k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━