Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary and other parties in the Biden administration for refusing to comply with federal law requiring them to assist States in verifying the citizenship status of potentially ineligible people registered to vote.
The complaint was filed October 22 in federal court in Pecos. In addition to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the complaint also names the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and CIS Director Ur M. Jaddou as defendants.
“Federal and Texas law prohibit non-U.S.-citizens from voting, but non-U.S.-citizens can nevertheless register to vote,” the complaint states. “And federal law prohibits Texas from requiring documentary proof of citizenship from people seeking to register to vote. But federal law requires the Department of Homeland Security to respond to inquiries from appropriate Texas authorities about the citizenship status of persons registered to vote. DHS has failed to comply with that duty.
“Therefore, the Attorney General of Texas and the Secretary of State of Texas hereby request that the court order defendants to comply with federal law and supply Texas the information they are required to supply in order to secure the integrity of Texas elections.”
Although federal and state law prohibit non-citizens from voting, the complaint says 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. Paxton’s complaint calls this “a commonsense measure to identify illegal registration.”
“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,” the complaint states. “Yet Congress has not corrected this statutory defect because the Senate has not passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (‘SAVE Act’), which would allow states to ensure that votes are being cast legally by eligible voters.
“For these reasons, Texans are increasingly concerned about the possibility of non-citizen voting, and the Attorney General of Texas and the Secretary of State of Texas have the responsibility to uphold the integrity of Texas’s elections.”
On October 7, Paxton sent a letter demanding that the federal government fulfill its legal obligations by verifying the citizenship status of people who may be illegally registered to vote in Texas by October 19. Including in that letter was a list of approximately 450,000 voters whose citizenship status has never been checked because they registered without a Texas-issued driver’s license or identification card.
Federal law requires the federal government to provide that information, and Paxton’s letter formally triggered those obligations. While the majority of the voters on the list likely are citizens who are eligible to vote, Texans have no way of knowing whether or not any of the voters on the list are noncitizens who are ineligible to vote without additional information.
However, Paxton says the Biden administration has refused to comply with the law and has failed to supply Texas with the required information necessary to secure the integrity of Texas elections. The Texas Secretary of State has joined the Office of the Attorney General as a co-plaintiff.
“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,” 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.”
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas case number 4:24-cv-49