Judge Orders DHS to Keep SAVE System Features Disabled After Conflicting Ruling

A federal judge in Washington ordered the Department of Homeland Security on July 8 to keep key functions of an immigration database disabled, directing the agency not to follow a conflicting order issued the previous day by another judge. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that officials must maintain disabled the ability to look up Social Security numbers and perform mass uploads in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, ZeroHedge reported.

Sooknanan had previously ordered the features disabled in June after determining that 2025 updates violated privacy laws by disclosing Americans' Social Security numbers and other sensitive information. The new order came after Judge T. Kent Wetherell II of the U.S.

District Court for the Northern District of Florida directed DHS on July 7 to enable the functions for four states under a 2025 settlement he had approved. Wetherell cited unrebutted evidence that the states were suffering real and concrete harm every day the features remained disabled and stated that the Social Security Act does not preclude disclosing Social Security numbers for immigration enforcement.

Sooknanan said Wetherell erred in significant ways, including by reaching a decision on the merits without opinions from parties outside the federal and state governments.

She added that even if Wetherell's ruling holds, the settlement applies only to DHS, not the Social Security Administration, and only to four states, so it would not prompt a stay of her order for the other 46 states. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the League of Women Voters, plaintiffs in the case before Sooknanan, asked Wetherell to allow them to intervene in the Florida case, citing the contradictory orders.