American flags hang next to the official agency flag in the building of the US Department of Justice in Washington in August. The Department of Justice provides data on voters to the State Department of the United States Internal Security. (Photo Jonathan Shormman/Stateline)
The Department of Justice of the United States shares information on state voters with the Internal Security Department in search of non -citizens, confirmed by the Trump administration.
Data sharing takes place after the lawyers of the Department of Justice this summer demanded These election officials in almost two dozen states transfer their lists of voters, associating some democratic state secretaries and election experts. They expressed concerns about how Trump’s administration planned to utilize data. Even some Republican secretaries refused to give full voters.
Internal security in an unsigned statement Stateline called sharing the information necessary to “scrub the aliens from the election kick” and said that the federal government “finally did what he should have – sharing information to solve problems.”
“This cooperation with the Doj will legally and critically enables DHS to prevent illegal aliens before corrupt the democratic process of our republic and additionally ensuring the integrity of our elections throughout the country. There are elections that the American nation choose its leaders, not illegal aliens,” we read in the statement.
The Department of Justice stated in his own statement that the data from the electoral kick provided in response to the applications of the Department of the Department “are checked for non -eligible voters’ entries.”
Voting non -unitizen is extremely infrequent. One election survey in 2016 took place dissemination of the vote at 0.0001% of the votes.
Sharing data is another step in the efforts of President Donald Trump in order to exert a greater federal influence on elections in relation to the state. Trump signed an executive ordinance at the beginning of this year, which tried to demand from individuals to provide evidence to register for voting, a rule quickly blocked in a federal court. He also threatened to sign another executive order trying to limit voting cards.
At least 10 states provided publicly available data, or received tips on the department on how to demand public data. On Friday, the Secretary of State Indiana Diego Morales, a Republican, confirmed to reporters that he provided the Department of Justice with all the required information of voters, including driving license and partial social insurance numbers – making Indiana the first known country that provided sensitive data personally.
While the administration has not described how internal security will utilize the list of voters to search for non -citizens, the agency conducts a powerful program, systematic verification of aliens or saving, which can identify the status of immigration or citizenship of the individual.
Save originally aimed at helping state and local officials in checking the immigration status of individuals who are not citizens looking for government benefits. But civic and immigration services in the US, which are part of internal security, changed it to a platform this spring, which can scan state voters if officials send data.
In the past, Save could search only one name at once. Now he can conduct mass searches, enabling officials to potentially provide information about IT on millions of registered voters. Save this information in relation to a series of federal databases and reports, or can it verify someone’s immigration status.
Because it can also utilize social insurance data, transforming the program into a tool that can confirm US citizenship, because social insurance registers for many, but not all Americans contain information.
Since the Department of Justice sought this summer, letters from the department’s lawyers to state officials in many cases demanded full lists of registered voters that contain confidential personal data, such as driving license numbers and partial social insurance numbers. According to Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, or at least 22 states. tracking tasks.
Some states passed publicly available voter files or presented guidelines for their asking. Others rejected the requests.
“The Department of Justice did not show any good reason for a fishing expedition in the field of sensitive information to every American,” Secretary of State Maine Shenna Bellows, a democrat, on Monday in a press release, announcing that her office rejected the second request of the Department of Justice for voters.
Justin Levitt, who served as a senior advisor for democracy and vote rights at Biden, White House and is now a professor of law at Loyola Marymount Loyola University, said that there is no certainty that internal security will act with all the data received.
Levitt, talking to Stateline on Wednesday, before confirming the sharing of data, expressed the fear that the Department of Justice “served as a haunting horse” for other entities in the government.
“The fact that they have to break through the back door, instead of knocking on the front door, tells you that the wrong procedures are underway,” Levitt said.
This story has been updated to add information from the Secretary of State Indiana Diego Morales, confirming that he was provided with information about the exile of voters in the US Department of Justice.
Whitney Downard from Indiana Capital Chronicle contributed to reporting. Stateline reporter Jonathan Surman Can be achieved at jshormman@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Statlinewhich is part of StatesRoom, non -information information, which includes the Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by subsidies and coalition of donors as 501C (3) public charity.
