AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas is taking the Biden administration to court over access to citizenship data ahead of the election, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday night.
Two weeks ago, Paxton demanded the Department of Homeland Security verify the citizenship status of people he says “may be illegally registered to vote” in Texas. He included a list of 450,000 voters whose citizenship status may be in question because they registered to vote without a state driver’s license or ID. Paxton said the majority of those 450,000 are likely citizens and eligible to vote, but “Texas has no way of knowing” if they are noncitizens without the federal data.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has refused to comply with federal law, presenting yet another obstacle for Texas to overcome in ensuring free and fair elections in our state,” Attorney General Paxton said. “The law demands that they provide important information regarding the citizenship of nearly half a million potentially ineligible voters. Since the Biden-Harris Administration has chosen to ignore the law, I will see them in court.”
Federal and state law prohibits noncitizens from voting. But federal law also prohibits Texas from requiring proof of citizenship from people trying to register to vote. That, Paxton says, could allow some ineligible people to slip through the cracks.
DHS told Nexstar that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “has engaged with Texas and will continue to correspond with them directly through official channels.” They pointed to the online service called “SAVE,” which they make available for all state agencies to verify citizenship status.
“SAVE is the most secure and efficient way to verify an individual’s citizenship or immigration status, including for verification regarding voter registration and/or voter list maintenance,” a DHS spokesperson said.
The implication, it appears, is that Texas can check their lists themselves without any need for additional data from DHS.
Election law experts are highly skeptical of Paxton’s lawsuit, explaining Texas already conducted a sweeping review of its voter rolls, and it is now too late to correct them anyway.
“This is not a real lawsuit. This is a messaging stunt,” civil rights attorney and adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas Mimi Marziani said. “There is absolutely no evidence of noncitizens on the voter registration rolls in Texas. And in fact, the State of Texas already went through a extensive process this summer where they removed hundreds of thousands of people from the Texas voter registration rolls for all sorts of reasons.”
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson also joined Paxton’s lawsuit.
“The federal government is obligated to provide states with information to maintain voter rolls and prevent non-citizen voting,” Secretary Nelson said. “Texas is taking action to compel these federal agencies to do their duty and supply the state with the required information we have repeatedly requested.”
Texas is asking a federal court to compel DHS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to provide the immigration and citizenship status of each of the 450,000 people.
Nexstar contacted the Attorney General’s Office and the Texas Secretary of State for more information but did not hear back.