The Supreme Court has granted President Donald Trump’s administration a stay on a lower court’s block of DHS implementing an overhaul of its immigration database to combat voter fraud before the November midterms.
“Under section 1373(c), the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters,” the majority wrote. “The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”
Trump expanded the scope of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, “directing DHS to put new systems in place to allow state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of registered voters and individuals registering to vote.”
Several organizations sued the administration over the expansion.
The administration went to SCOTUS after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted to uphold a district court’s block on the overhaul.
“Lest there be any doubt, section 1373(c) requires DHS to respond to inquiries from state and local agencies ‘seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual,’” the majority explained. “Considered alongside section 1373’s ‘notwithstanding’ clauses, section 1373(c) appears to contemplate an information-sharing regime like the modified SAVE program.”
The majority admitted that SCOTUS will likely “reverse the District Court’s holding that the federal defendants violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the APA.”
The justices reminded the plaintiffs: “In 1996, Congress, however, separately and expressly authorized DHS to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including SSA, in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).”
IIRIRA provision, 8 U. S. C. § 1373, states that no one, “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law,” can stand in the way of “any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the [DHS] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
In other words, Congress “authorized DHS to request and receive that information.”
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