A senior official in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held a briefing for a far-right anti-voting group on Thursday, according to an email sent by the group. The virtual meeting was to discuss how a database run by the department can be used to verify the citizenship status of registered voters.
The email, sent Thursday to members of the Election Integrity Network (EIN) — a voter-suppression advocacy group founded by the prominent anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell — advertised David Jennings, DHS’s associate chief of U.S. citizenship and immigration services, as the special guest for a Zoom meeting later that morning.
“When Trump issued Executive Order 14248 earlier this year, he included much needed directives to the Department of Homeland Security to ensure (finally!) that state and local election officials have full and free access to the system used by DHS to verify citizenship status of individuals already on voter rolls,” the invite to EIN members read. “But what does that look like? How does it work in real time? And who has access?”
The email said that Jennings would review the abilities of DHS’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program — a federal database to help state and local governments confirm the citizenship status of individuals — to “aid in assuring that noncitizens are removed from our voter rolls.”…