DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — Iowa’s attorney general and secretary of state sued federal immigration officials Tuesday, claiming they are breaking the law by failing to turn over the names of noncitizens Iowa officials believe have illegally registered to vote.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate earlier this year asked the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to verify whether any of 2,176 registered voters the state suspected of illegally registering to vote are U.S. citizens. After an Iowa-based immigration agent initially said some of the people on the state’s list were noncitizens, the Washington office’s headquarters denied Iowa’s request for all of those people’s names.
In the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, the state claims the agency violated a federal law that gives state officials the right to know the citizenship status of anyone in their jurisdiction “for any purpose authorized by law.” Iowa is seeking an injunction ordering the agency to produce the names of any noncitizens on the list.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a statement issued Tuesday, “I am suing for the Biden-Harris Administration to finally release the election integrity data that it has been hiding from Iowa. The Biden-Harris Administration knows who the hundreds of noncitizens are on our voter rolls and has repeatedly refused to tell us who they are. But the law is clear: voters must be American citizens.”
Iowa names U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur M. Jaddou, and their respective departments as defendants.
Neither agency responded to a request for comment from Courthouse News Service.
In their complaint, Iowa’s attorney general and secretary of state say federal officials “refuse to comply with law and answer valid requests for information from the Secretary of State of Iowa for the citizenship status of those people on the voter rolls for whom the state cannot verify their citizenship status using existing state resources.”
Iowa’s effort to verify the citizenship of registered voters was the subject of a suit filed in federal court just days ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The League of United Latin American Citizens and four naturalized citizens registered to vote in Iowa claimed the secretary of state violated federal election law by directing county election officials to challenge or purge the voter registrations. The 2,176 people on the list were singled out because they once identified as noncitizens when they applied for driver’s licenses.
On Nov. 3, U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher denied their bid to block enforcement of Pate’s Oct. 22 directive that the ballots of possible noncitizens on his list be challenged at the polls.