Republican State Officials Sue Biden Administration Over Noncitizen Voting

President Joe Biden with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at an interagency briefing at the White House in Washington on October 1, 2024. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP)

Republican officials in Florida, Ohio and Texas sued President Joe Biden’s administration this week, alleging that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is denying them access to citizenship records needed to maintain their voter rolls. 

The discussions around voter roll maintenance, especially in the vein of noncitizen voting, have been prevalent this election cycle, but states directly suing a federal agency in the Biden administration is new.

One way that states can verify the citizenship of registered voters is by using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program — an online service used by government agencies to check an individual’s immigration status.

To conduct a SAVE inquiry, a state must submit an individual’s unique immigration identifier, which is issued by the federal government. However, state agencies may not have access to an identification number for every single individual. This is the crux of the recent lawsuits.

On Sept. 10, the Florida Department of State (FDOS) led by Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) sent a request to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is part of DHS, asking them to verify the citizenship status of certain individuals on the state’s voter rolls who could not be verified through the SAVE program. 

Then, on Oct. 10, the state received a response from Ur Jaddou, Director of USCIS, which “denied FDOS’s request for further information about the specific individuals in question and refused to offer any means of identifying immigration status beyond the SAVE program,” according to the lawsuit.

The state of Florida and its state department sued DHS and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas (D), on Oct. 16, asking a federal court to order them to respond to their inquiries about the citizenship status of individuals.

They argued that the agency has “readily accessible information apart from the SAVE program that is responsive to Florida’s inquiries,” and that they are obligated to provide it under federal law. 

Separately, on Oct. 7, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) asked USCIS to verify the citizenship status of numerous individuals because the state did not have access to unique immigration identifiers for them, and he did not receive a response, according to his lawsuit. 

He claimed that Texas could not verify the citizenship status of over 450,000 voters because they registered to vote without a Texas driver’s license or ID from DHS or USCIS. On Oct. 22, Paxton, along with Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R), sued both DHS and USCIS.

The latest state to follow suit is Ohio. From July to September, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose submitted multiple requests to DHS for access to the federal government’s Person Centric Query Service (PCQS) — a database that allows searches without a unique immigration identifier, according to the Ohio lawsuit. 

On Oct. 10, the DHS responded, saying that the SAVE program was the best database for verifying citizenship status and that PCQS results would be less reliable.

On Thursday, the state of Ohio and LaRose sued DHS and Mayorkas, asking a court to order DHS to grant the state access to PCQS and any other federal databases it needs to verify the citizenship status of voters.

In their lawsuits, all three states claimed that the DHS’ actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act — which requires federal agencies to provide timely responses to requests from state government — and a law stating that the federal government “shall respond” to a state’s inquiry on citizenship or immigration status of an individual.

In a statement about Ohio’s lawsuit, LaRose specifically named Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ administration. With the election approaching, Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, continue to criticize Harris’ immigration policies.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is engaging in obstruction and outright abuse of power to prevent us from removing noncitizens from our voter rolls,” LaRose said. “I take my duty seriously, so if they want a fight over the integrity of our elections, they’ve got it.”

The administration has not made any public statement about the cases.

Learn more about the Florida case here.

Learn more about the Ohio case here.

Learn more about the Texas case here.