Iowa election officials filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, after the federal government refused to provide a list of all non-citizens who were registered to vote in Iowa before the 2024 elections.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services refused to provide a list of illegally registered noncitizens to vote in Iowa, “despite having verified that hundreds of such noncitizens had been on Iowa’s voting rolls following a manual individual process”, Iowa Secretary of state Paul Pate and Attorney general Brenna Bird stated in a Tuesday lawsuit. The complaint was filed against USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security.

State officials checked the voter lists against a list of 2176 people, who were not citizens according to the Iowa Department of Transportation.

The defendants claimed that the statewide voter registration in Iowa does not include any “DHS-issued Immigration Identifier[s]” which the USCIS can access, making it difficult for noncitizens to be identified.

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Pate and Bird claimed that, without enough data to screen for illegal voters, Iowa election officials had to require that 2,176 people, including many naturalized citizens who were in question, provide proof of citizenship during the elections or cast a provisional vote in order for their votes to be counted.

The two Iowa officials stated in a Wednesday joint press release that “USCIS’s failing meant that the State was forced to rely upon the best – imperfect – data that it had at its disposal to ensure that no Iowan vote would be canceled due to an illegal noncitizen voting.”

The Washington Examiner contacted USCIS to get a comment, but at the time it was published had not yet received a response.

If Iowa wins in court, federal officials will be forced to provide requested information on non-citizens voters to the state. USCIS would also have to release these lists.

Pate, in a Wednesday statement, said that the combination of the SAVE list and citizenship verification completed by USCIS as well as the ability to use social security numbers to verify will not only improve processes but also add another tool to our toolbox for safeguarding our election process.

USCIS uses the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program to examine immigration status.

The lawsuit was filed after the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa had sued Pate in October over his demand that 2,176 non-citizens on the Department of Transportation’s list of the state show proof of citizenship, or cast provisional votes.

The ACLU, which represented four of the people who were on the list and had naturalized as citizens, argued that this plan was unconstitutional.

Two days before the elections, a federal judge rejected the group’s request that the ballot challenges be stopped.