Audit shows SAVE system wrongly approved illegal aliens for benefits 12% of the time

An audit by the Homeland Security Inspector General found that the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which verifies the immigration status of public benefit applicants, okayed one in eight aliens who had been ordered deported. This caused some aliens to get unauthorized benefits.SAVE, which is operated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) bureau, is used by federal and state agencies to disqualify illegal aliens seeking public benefits. USCIS is supposed to keep the system up to date but auditors produced a random sample of queries to the system that wrongly approved illegal aliens 12 percent of the time.The audit states that, “The failures in our sample include individuals who applied for unemployment and disability insurance, food stamps, driver’s licenses and other benefits. Several individuals had criminal records, including assault with a deadly weapon, extortion, drug convictions and other convictions such as burglary, stalking and child abuse…(B)y erroneously verifying that a deportable individual has status to receive benefits, SAVE may have enabled the inquiring agency to grant financial and other benefits (e.g., access to secure areas, education grants, and housing assistance) to people who are no longer eligible to receive those benefits.”USCIS promised to do a better job of updating data in SAVE, which come from multiple agencies within DHS.Read here for more information.