Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently sued the Biden-Harris administration over failing to provide information that is reportedly needed to verify the citizenship of 450,000 “potentially ineligible voters” ahead of the presidential election. The defendants in the lawsuit are the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and its director, Ur Jaddou.
Paxton has claimed that over 450,000 people in Texas did not use a state-issued driver’s license or ID card to register to vote in the state. The state attorney general noted that “these voters never had their citizenship verified.” Furthermore, the lawsuit against the federal government claims the Biden-Harris administration refused to comply with “valid requests” to provide information that would verify the citizenship status of the nearly half a million voters.
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson wrote a letter to Jaddou in September requesting assistance in verifying the citizenship of individuals who could not be verified. Jaddou responded, “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program is the most secure and efficient way to reliably verify an individual’s citizenship or immigration status, including for verification regarding voter registration and/or voter list maintenance,” and said that USCIS “currently cannot offer an alternative process to any state.”
Jaddou continued, “Since 2009, SAVE has been used by elections authorities in states for voter registration and/or voter list maintenance. Currently, ten states are registered to use SAVE for these purposes. The process has been the same since the program’s inception.”
“By inputting an individual’s name, unique DHS-issued immigration identifier, and birthdate, registered agencies can determine whether that person obtained U.S. citizenship through the naturalization process or, for certain other individuals born abroad, whether USCIS has information confirming their U.S. citizenship. Each registered agency determines the best process to obtain the required identifiers,” Jaddou further stated. “The state elections authority must provide any individual who is not verified as a U.S. citizen through SAVE the opportunity to show documentation of their U.S. citizenship.”
However, Paxton’s lawsuit maintained, “Although federal and state law prohibit non-citizens from voting, federal law paradoxically creates opportunities for non-citizens to illegally register to vote while prohibiting States from requiring voters to have proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections — a common sense measure to identify illegal registration. Under any circumstances, this federal prohibition against citizenship verification makes little sense, but it is especially troubling given the current scale of the illegal immigration crisis.”
According to a statement from a DHS spokesperson on the legal action taken against it by Paxton, “DHS does not comment on pending litigation. More broadly, USCIS has engaged with Texas and will continue to correspond with them directly through official channels. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) administers an online information service called SAVE that allows registered and authorized agencies, including election authorities in states, to verify certain individuals’ citizenship or immigration status.”
The lawsuit filed against the Biden-Harris administration by Paxton is the latest move from various states seeking to protect the integrity of their elections amid concerns about noncitizens voting amid the surge in illegal immigration under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Watch House Speaker Mike Johnson stress the need for election security below:
Featured image credit: The United States Department of Justice, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Texas_Attorney_General_Ken_Paxton_delivers_remarks.jpg
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