DHS Says Iowa Has Hundreds Of Noncitizens On Voter Rolls, But Won’t Tell State Who They Are

More than 2,100 people on Iowa’s voter rolls self-declared as non-citizens when registering for drivers licenses, Iowa Secretary of State Paul D. Pate said.

He provided the names to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which researched each name to determine if it is a mistake or they are in fact non-citizens — who are not allowed to vote — then refused to tell Iowa what it found, Pate wrote in an October 31 letter.

He later said USCIS confirmed that at least 250 were, indeed, non-citizens, but wouldn’t tell the state which ones they are. (Others may have become citizens after getting their drivers licenses.) Meanwhile, left-wing groups sued to block him from removing names by claiming he could wind up accidentally removing citizens since the data Pate had wasn’t fully confirmed. People who were flagged would still be able to cast provisional votes.

“The Des Moines Field Office [of USCIS] has since informed us that they had completed a review of every name. Now, the office in Washington, D.C. is refusing to let the Des Moines office share those results with us. This information would be critical to Iowa’s election officials in this process,” the letter said.

“The work has been done. The most current, verified information is available. Yet Washington, D.C. will not share it with us,” it continued. “If the federal government has information that will ensure only U.S. citizens vote AND ensure naturalized citizens can cast their ballot as normal, that information must be shared.” 

Pate said he has asked the federal Department of Justice to intervene, but it refused. That led him to resort to seeking intervention from the state’s senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, both Republicans. The pair wrote to USCIS Director Ur Jaddou to demand that he provide the data by November 1, but he did not, they said.

“Anything short of the information Secretary Pate requested is unacceptable. Iowa has worked in good faith to secure its electoral process and safeguard Americans’ cherished right to vote. Unfortunately, USCIS’ stonewalling has led to more questions than answers,” they said in a statement.

The refusal of the federal government to tell a state whether registered voters are citizens or not is a stunning development after the DOJ sued the state of Virginia for removing self-declared noncitizens from its rolls by saying that it could only be done if each case was researched individually, and if it could be ensured that American citizens who were mistakenly listed would not be removed from the rolls. Both of those things apparently occurred in the Iowa case, yet the federal government still made it impossible to remove the names.

In Virginia, people who said they were not citizens when applying for drivers licenses, then registered to vote, were sent a letter asking them to clarify whether it was a mix-up or not, and if they did not respond within 14 days, then they were removed from the rolls but would still be able to cast a provisional ballot. The Biden-Harris DOJ sued to block the move, claiming it was burdensome for people to have to respond to a letter. 

The lawsuit said that Virginia was free to remove non-citizens from its rolls through “systematic” means, but only outside of a 90-day “quiet period” before an election. Given that there are primary and general elections, that could mean the majority of an election year is off-limits.

Two lower courts sided with the DOJ, but the Supreme Court reversed them and allowed Virginia to remove the voters.