Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
1996 US immigration law covering enforcement, removal and federal data sharing.
A 1996 immigration law became the legal footing for bulk citizenship checks on US voter rolls on 25 September 2026, when the Supreme Court majority read IIRIRA as permitting the data sharing behind DHS's expanded SAVE System.
Last refreshed: 1 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Timeline for Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
Supreme Court revives DHS's SAVE checks
US Midterms 2026Background
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act is a 1996 US law that reshaped immigration enforcement. It was enacted as Division C of the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997 (Pub. L. 104-208), signed on 30 September 1996. It created expedited removal and the three- and ten-year re-entry bars for people WHO had been unlawfully present.
Its section 642, codified at 8 U.S.C. 1373, bars federal, state and local bodies from restricting officials WHO share information about a person's citizenship or immigration status, and requires the federal immigration service to answer verification requests from other agencies. For most of its life that provision mattered chiefly in fights over local co-operation with immigration enforcement.
In 2026 its data-sharing rules took on a role in elections. the Supreme Court majority's reading of the law, in letting DHS restore its SAVE citizenship checks, made it a foundation for federal verification of voter rolls.
A 1996 provision now underpins voter checks
IIRIRA was not written with voter rolls in mind, but in 2026 it carried the government's case for them. The Department of Homeland Security's modified SAVE System lets election offices search citizenship data against Social Security records in bulk. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked it on 22 June 2026, and the appeals court in Washington declined to bring it back on 4 September.
On 25 September the Supreme Court granted DHS a 6-3 stay, and the majority read the 1996 law's information-sharing rules as allowing the exchange the system depends on. That reading gives a three-decade-old enforcement statute a new job in election administration, though the timing of any removals before 3 November remains limited by a separate federal law.
What does section 1373 of IIRIRA say?
Why did the Supreme Court cite IIRIRA in the 2026 SAVE case?
When was IIRIRA passed?
Does IIRIRA override the Privacy Act?
