DALLAS, TEXAS - JULY 11: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton waves after speaking during the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on July 11, 2021 in Dallas, Texas. CPAC began in 1974, and is a conference that brings together and hosts conservative organizations, activists, and world leaders in discussing current events and future political agendas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton waves after speaking during the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on July 11, 2021 in Dallas, Texas.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he recently filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for not providing the state with necessary information regarding the citizenship status of 450,000 individuals in question.

“The law demands that they provide important information regarding the citizenship of nearly half a million potentially ineligible voters,” Paxton wrote. “Since the Biden-Harris Administration has chosen to ignore the law, I will see them in court.”

Paxton’s office gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until October 19th to assist in verifying the citizenship status of the 450,000 questionable voters, which Paxton stated was due to the individuals registering without any form of Texas-issued identification.

DHS responded to the request, stating that all states requesting assistance with verifying voter citizenship need to utilize the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) SAVE program.

Paxton wrote a letter to the USCIS director on October 7th, stating: “Although I have no doubt the vast majority of the voters on the list are citizens who are eligible to vote, I am equally certain that Texans have no way of knowing whether or not any of the voters on the list are noncitizens who are ineligible to vote.”

The USCIS director, Ur Jaddou, a defendant in the filing, responded to the request, explaining that the “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.”

“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,” Jaddau continued. “The state elections authority must provide any individual who is not verified as a U.S. citizen through SAVE the opportunity to show documentation for their U.S. citizenship.”

Although Jaddou pointed the Texas AG to the SAVE program, the lawsuit argues that the system in place “is not an adequate tool, on its own, for a state seeking to verify the citizenship status of an individual on the voter rolls,” due to the prerequisite of a “unique DHS-issued immigration identifier,” which the suit argues is “information that is not maintained by, or readily available to, the Secretary of State of Texas or Texas’s voter registrars.”

Additionally, the lawsuit cites that Texas’ voter registration system does not hold any records of “DHS-issued immigration identifier[s],” meaning that even if the state “could obtain this data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, that effort would be limited to individuals who provided such information to obtain a driver license or personal identification card – and thus would not encompass individuals for whom there is no Texas-issued driver license or ID card number in Texas’s voter registration system.”

“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,” the suit continued. “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.”

Meanwhile, a DHS spokesperson responded, highlighting the SAVE program as the only way to verify the citizenship of all individuals on voter rolls.

“DHS does not comment on pending litigation,” the spokesperson stated. “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.”

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