Iowa Citizenship Status Information Challenge

Lawsuit filed by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (R) and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R) against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Ur M. Jaddou and their respective agencies seeking the immigration and citizenship status of 2,167 voters. 

Iowa verifies the citizenship status of voters by comparing voter rolls to citizenship status information from the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT). Ahead of the 2024 general election, Iowa election officials attempted to verify the citizenship status of 65,000 voters who registered without an Iowa issued drivers’ license or identification card. The plaintiffs reached out to USCIS for assistance. After a USCIS agent based in Iowa attempted to assist these officials, agency headquarters stepped in and refused to release citizenship data. The agency told Iowa to instead use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program — an online service used by government agencies to check an individual’s immigration status. The plaintiffs claim that they are unable to conduct a SAVE inquiry on individuals without a “unique immigration identifier,” which is assigned to noncitizens by the federal government and not readily accessible to state governments. 

Iowa election officials instead checked citizenship status based on their own DOT data and instructed county officials to challenge the status of 2,176 alleged noncitizens shortly before Election Day. Several of these suspected noncitizens were actually naturalized citizens who gained their citizenship after they first applied for an Iowa drivers’ license or ID. In a separate case, some of those affected voters are suing the secretary of state for violating federal law and interfering with their constitutional right to vote.

The plaintiffs argue that Jaddou and USCIS’s failure to respond to their request violates the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), a federal law that requires federal agencies to provide timely responses to requests from state governments. They also argue that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS’s decision to provide information on citizenship status only through the SAVE program violates a federal law that entitles state governments to receive citizenship status information and a provision of the APA that requires all agency programs to comply with federal law. The plaintiffs ask the court to order the DHS and USCIS to provide the citizenship status of over 2,000 voters so the state can verify they are lawfully registered and to modify the SAVE program so states can access the citizenship data with a unique immigration identifier.

STATUS: The plaintiffs filed their complaint on Dec. 3, 2024. The defendants have not responded yet.

Last updated: December 3, 2024 4:12 pm EST