Sanctuary cities and other localities across the U.S. have freed more than 22,000 criminal migrants wanted by federal immigration authorities since January 2021, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The numbers pertain to ICE detainer requests ignored by local law enforcement agencies, instances when the enforcement agency provided insufficient notice to ICE or early releases of migrants subjected to detainer requests.

Immigration detainers are submitted to local law enforcement agencies after they take custody of a non-citizen — typically on criminal charges unrelated to immigration violations — that ICE suspects to be living in the U.S. unlawfully. These detainers ask the enforcement agency to hold on to the non-citizen long enough for an ICE agent to arrive and make an apprehension on-site.

However, countless localities have passed laws that strictly forbid their law enforcement from cooperating with ICE, which would include honoring immigration detainers. The data published by CIS suggests that sanctuary cities increasingly ignored detainer requests under the Biden-Harris administration, meaning more criminal migrants were released back into the community over the years.

There were 2,512 declined detainers in fiscal year 2021, beginning when Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021, according to the ICE data. There were 5,723 declined detainers in fiscal year 2022, 7,934 declined detainers in fiscal year 2023 and 5,871 declined detainers in fiscal year 2024 only up to the middle of July.

The number of criminal aliens freed into the country by sanctuary authorities could potentially be much higher given that, in numerous instances, local law enforcement releases criminal migrants before ICE is able to become aware of their apprehension and lodge a detainer request.

There are an estimated 17 million illegal migrants currently living in the U.S. as of June 2023, resulting in local law enforcement agencies having countless run-ins with individuals who do not hold lawful status. Since early 2023, ICE has lodged an average of roughly 10,000 immigration detainer requests a month, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse.

President-elect Donald Trump — who won office on a hardline immigration platform — has pledged to crack down on sanctuary cities, which could include withholding federal funds. However, sanctuary city leaders have so far expressed intense opposition to the idea of cooperating more with ICE agents.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said her police force would not be helping the president-elect’s expected plans for mass deportations, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pledged to resist the upcoming administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. Since Trump’s election victory, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been working with city officials to fast-track a bill that would enforce sanctuary laws in her city, and she hopes to have it passed before Trump makes it into office.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation about the detainer data.

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Sanctuary cities and other localities across the U.S. have freed more than 22,000 criminal migrants wanted by federal immigration authorities since January 2021, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The numbers pertain to ICE detainer requests ignored by local law enforcement agencies, instances when the enforcement agency provided insufficient notice to ICE or early releases of migrants subjected to detainer requests.

Immigration detainers are submitted to local law enforcement agencies after they take custody of a non-citizen — typically on criminal charges unrelated to immigration violations — that ICE suspects to be living in the U.S. unlawfully. These detainers ask the enforcement agency to hold on to the non-citizen long enough for an ICE agent to arrive and make an apprehension on-site.

However, countless localities have passed laws that strictly forbid their law enforcement from cooperating with ICE, which would include honoring immigration detainers. The data published by CIS suggests that sanctuary cities increasingly ignored detainer requests under the Biden-Harris administration, meaning more criminal migrants were released back into the community over the years.

There were 2,512 declined detainers in fiscal year 2021, beginning when Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021, according to the ICE data. There were 5,723 declined detainers in fiscal year 2022, 7,934 declined detainers in fiscal year 2023 and 5,871 declined detainers in fiscal year 2024 only up to the middle of July.

The number of criminal aliens freed into the country by sanctuary authorities could potentially be much higher given that, in numerous instances, local law enforcement releases criminal migrants before ICE is able to become aware of their apprehension and lodge a detainer request.

There are an estimated 17 million illegal migrants currently living in the U.S. as of June 2023, resulting in local law enforcement agencies having countless run-ins with individuals who do not hold lawful status. Since early 2023, ICE has lodged an average of roughly 10,000 immigration detainer requests a month, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse.

President-elect Donald Trump — who won office on a hardline immigration platform — has pledged to crack down on sanctuary cities, which could include withholding federal funds. However, sanctuary city leaders have so far expressed intense opposition to the idea of cooperating more with ICE agents.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said her police force would not be helping the president-elect’s expected plans for mass deportations, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pledged to resist the upcoming administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. Since Trump’s election victory, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been working with city officials to fast-track a bill that would enforce sanctuary laws in her city, and she hopes to have it passed before Trump makes it into office.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation about the detainer data.

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Trump decisively won re-election to the White House, having secured 295 electoral votes and drawing more than 73 million supporters to the voting booth on Election Day, per the latest results as of Friday. The victory brings into sharper focus his campaign platform, which includes incredibly hawkish border security proposals. 

The president-elect, who already established himself as a stalwart on border enforcement during his first term in office, made a slate of campaign promises on border security over the past year, such as completing the U.S.-Mexico border wall, reviving the Remain in Mexico program, bringing back the travel ban and hiring more Border Patrol agents.

Trump also introduced a number of more novel pledges while on the campaign trail, such as a vow to conduct the “largest deportation program in American history” and a plan to end birthright citizenship for those born on American soil by illegal migrant parents.

Trump’s rhetoric and past reputation may have already helped mitigate the immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Upon hearing that he was elected to a second term, numerous migrants in southern Mexico expressed hopelessness and opted to leave a U.S.-bound caravan they were traveling in, with a Mexican official noting that the incoming caravan of roughly 3,000 migrants shrunk by roughly half its size after Trump declared victory.

Immigration experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation, while cautioning that anti-borders groups will fight the upcoming administration tooth and nail, said the American people can certainly expect a return to the tough immigration measures that were seen in Trump’s first term.

“America can expect the new Trump administration to do what the prior Trump Administration did: To apply the Immigration and Nationality Act, as written by Congress. And to restore the rule of law, both to the Southern border and to the legal immigration system,” said Matt O’Brien, investigations director at the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), a conservative legal group in Washington, D.C., that pushes for stricter immigration policies.

“The overall goal will be protecting the public safety and national security of the United States; as well as protecting migrants — especially vulnerable women and children — from exploitation by smugglers and traffickers,” O’Brien continued. “The only thing that needs to be done to ‘fix’ the immigration system is to use the laws on the books as Congress intended. And President Trump will do that.”

As for laws set by Congress, several lawmakers in the House and Senate told the DCNF that they are ready and waiting with their own legislation once Trump re-enters the Oval Office.

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, said he looks forward to passing his Justice for Jocelyn Act in the next Congress, an homage to a 12-year-old Houston girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered in June by two illegal migrants. The bill would mandate the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “exhaust all reasonable efforts” to keep an illegal migrant in custody before releasing them into the interior of the country, according to the legislation.

Should an illegal migrant be released, however, the legislation would call for continuous GPS monitoring until their removal from the U.S. or the completion of their immigration proceedings. Texas GOP Rep. Troy Nehls has sponsored the same legislation on the House side.

“In a second Trump administration, the House Committee on Homeland Security will do everything possible to help the United States return to an era of secure borders and robust interior enforcement,” GOP Rep. Mark Green, who serves as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, stated to the DCNF. “Ending the Biden-Harris border crisis will require two things — policy changes to end the flow of inadmissible aliens into our country, and more funding for interior enforcement to demonstrate that there are consequences to entering illegally.”

The election results so far show Congress will likely be in a position to support the upcoming Trump administration’s immigration agenda. The GOP secured control of the Senate after flipping four different Senate seats, and while there is no definitive winner of the House majority yet, Republicans appear to have a slight edge as votes continue to trickle in.idential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) tours the U.S. Border Wall on August 01, 2024 in Montezuma Pass, Arizona. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

While it’ up for debate on exactly what bills Trump ultimately signs into law or executive orders he takes, it’s certain that the incoming president will face courtroom fights over whatever he decides to do.

“Any action that President Trump would take, someone is going to sue,” Eric Ruark, research director for NumbersUSA, stated to the DCNF about the expected barrage of court challenges the Trump administration will receive once it embarks on its immigration agenda. “It depends on whether you find a judge that will rule against him, and it may take a long time for these things to play out.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed more than 400 legal actions against Trump and his administration since 2016, according to their count, and these lawsuits targeted a vast number of his first term’s immigration priorities. The massive liberal organization, and others like it, say they’re ready to battle the Republican again now that he will be returning to office.

Even President Joe Biden, who entered office on a pledge to undo Trump’s hawkish border policies, was sued by immigrant rights groups when he finally attempted to end the illegal immigration crisis by issuing an executive order in June that largely shut down crossings at the southern border.

The Biden-Harris administration oversaw record-levels of border encounters during its time in office, with illegal border crossings in fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2024 being the worst in history, according to CBP data. The border crisis began after the administration in its first year took nearly 90 executive actions that specifically targeted Trump’s first-term immigration policies.

While some of Trump’s more ambitious goals will take time and likely endure legal challenges, there are swift administrative actions that the president-elect will likely take on day one of his administration, Ruark noted.

“Ending the parole abuse,” he said, referring to the CHNV program and others like it that have paroled into the U.S. more than half a million foreign nationals during the Biden administration. Around 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans have been flown into the country under the CHNV initiative.

“On day one I think he would end those parole programs,” Ruark said. “And people who come in under parole were being allowed — and I guess they still are — to sponsor other people to come in, which is a complete violation of the law. So that is something Trump can end on day one.”

He also listed the termination of the CBP One app — which has allowed roughly one million foreign nationals to schedule appointments at ports of entry since it was first rolled out — and the withholding of federal funds from sanctuary cities as other unilateral actions that Trump will likely embark on immediately.

A successful immigration agenda will also hinge in large part on cooperation from Mexico, which stands in between the U.S. southern border and the countless illegal migrants who wish to cross it every year. The former Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, ramped up his government’s crackdown on U.S.-bound illegal migration, giving relief to Biden as he dealt with historic border encounters.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Lopez Obrador’s successor, took office in October, but questions remain on how the leftist Mexican leader will get along with Trump. Sheinbaum on Thursday confirmed that she had a “cordial” phone call with the president-elect following his victory, but did not go into further detail on what was discussed. A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign declined to comment on what was said during the phone call when reached by the DCNF.

Regardless of legal pushback by liberal organizations or a lack of cooperation from his Mexican counterparts, immigration experts do anticipate Trump to be even tougher on immigration than he was in his first term.

“I would be surprised and very disappointed if not,” Ruark said.

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A migrant caravan heading for the U.S.-Mexico border has shrunk to roughly half its size as members accepted the fact that Trump would be re-taking the reins at the White House, according to a report from Reuters. An official from Mexico’s National Migration Institute told the outlet that the caravan dwindled to under 1,600 migrants, a sharp drop from its original size of 3,000 when it embarked on its northward journey on Tuesday in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula.

The official added that more than 100 individuals had asked for assistance from authorities on returning to Tapachula, but it’s not entirely clear where the rest of the caravan deserters are headed.

“I had hoped [Vice President Kamala Harris] would win, but that didn’t happen,” said Venezuelan migrant Valerie Andrade, according to Reuters.

Other migrants expressed hopelessness at Trump’s election victory, and even disdain at the historic levels of Latino support the Republican amassed in his landslide win.

“This is the end of my dream of getting out of Cuba,” said Felipe, a Cuban migrant, according to Newsweek.

“They forgot about when they were on the other side,” Mahily Paz, another Venezuelan migrant, said about Latinos who voted for Trump, according to Newsweek. The statement erroneously suggests that most or all Latino Americans are a product of illegal immigration.

Trump emerged victorious early Wednesday morning in the U.S. presidential election, securing more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. As of Thursday, the president-elect has also remained ahead in the popular vote count, making him the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since former President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004.

Trump, who made border enforcement a hallmark of his first presidential term, has promised a return to a hawkish immigration policy. The president-elect has vowed to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history,” a completion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and a slate of other crackdowns.

While Harris attempted to rebrand herself as more of a hawk on border security on the campaign trail, she could not shake off the perception from voters and would-be illegal migrants that she was the weaker candidate when it came to immigration enforcement.

Trump’s landslide victory on Election Day was driven in large part by growing Latino support, exit polls revealed.

The president-elect won roughly 45% of the Latino vote, marking a dramatic increase from the 32% Latino support he garnered in the 2020 presidential election, according to USA Today. He also won Latino men outright, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in U.S. history.

As of Thursday afternoon, Trump had so far amassed 295 electoral votes and nearly 73 million votes from American citizens.

While many migrants expressed their dismay at the election outcome and chose to turn around, others have chosen to keep gunning for the U.S. border.

“With God’s favor, I’ll get that appointment,” a Venezuelan migrant named Jeilimar said to Reuters, speaking about her appointment to request asylum with U.S. immigration officials via the CBP One app.

Biden administration officials and other immigration workers are bracing for the possibility that Trump’s election victory will spark a rush at the border before he takes office in January, with migrants hoping to make it into the U.S. before an expected border crackdown begins.

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A doorbell camera on Aug. 18 recorded six armed men entering an apartment building, roughly ten minutes before a 25-year-old was shot at the complex and later died from his injuries. Local leaders say the footage prompted the city to finally acknowledge and address what had been percolating for a long time: the emergence of a notorious Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua in Aurora.

Emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation suggest that Republican Mayor Mike Coffman dismissed the narrative that problems associated with the apartment buildings were tied to gang activity. CBZ Management, the property management company that owns the apartment complex where the August incident took place, tried warning the mayor and other city officials about the threat of Tren de Aragua, but those warnings came to no avail, the company told the DCNF.

“Zev [Baumgarten] and other people working there did everything possible to get the police to pay attention to the story. They did not,” a representative for the CBZ Management said to the Daily Caller News Foundation, in a conversation that included Zev Baumgarten, who has been described in court documents as the owner of the company. CBZ Management is the owner of several apartment buildings in Aurora that have allegedly been taken over by Tren de Aragua gang members, but the company says they were made out to be the bad guys when they attempted to warn city leaders.

The company told the DCNF that it had no idea what Tren de Aragua was until an employee was viciously attacked while visiting one of its properties to empty out a unit in November 2023. CBZ subsequently hired a security firm to try to get a hold of the situation, but was soon told by the firm that the level of crime was out of their reach and suggested it reach out to the FBI — which the company did.

It was at that meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and local Aurora police that the company was informed that the crime in the building was connected to Tren de Aragua, according to CBZ. The FBI declined to comment.

Shortly afterward the company related that information to local authorities, but Aurora officials ignored their warnings and instead blamed them for building code violations, according to the CBZ spokesperson.

A spokesperson for Aurora confirmed that this assault took place. Yoendry Vilchez Medina-Jose was arrested Aug. 5 by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant that stemmed from the November 2023 assault, according to the City of Aurora. The city also confirmed that Medina-Jose is a documented member of Tren de Aragua.

“The City — instead of going after real criminals — they manufactured a criminal in their minds with Zev Baumgarten and went after him,” the CBZ spokesperson said. “We believe the reason they did that was to hide the story.”

“Instead of shutting down a building and saying they’re doing it because of gang activity, they say they’re shutting down a building because of code enforcement violations and the big bad wolf is Zev Baumgarten,” they continued. “He was just a local person they could pin it on.”

It’s not immediately clear when Aurora government leaders began responding to reports that an organized crime syndicate had likely taken over apartment buildings in the city.

Mayor Coffman took to social media on Sept. 11 to confirm that Tren de Aragua had a presence in “specific properties” in the city and that the Venezuelan gang’s activities had “significantly affected” these properties. That confirmation was preceded by other statements to the media on Aug. 29, with Coffman specifically saying that “there are several buildings, actually under the same out-of-state ownership, that have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs.”

“The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity in our city – and our state – have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety,” read a statement from the City of Aurora when the DCNF reached out to the mayor for comment. “The city and state have not been ‘taken over’ or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs.”

“The incidents that have occurred in Aurora, a city of 400,000 people, have been limited to a handful of specific apartment complexes, and our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns and will continue to do so,” the statement continued.

Yet, as recently as early August, Coffman appeared to dismiss claims of the gang’s existence at these buildings, instead painting CBZ as a “problem” that has plagued the city for years with alleged “code violations,” emails obtained by the DCNF via a records request show.

“This building has been a problem for years and the city is taking the owners to court over persistent code violations,” Coffman wrote in an email on Aug. 7. “The owners are contending that they lost control of the building due to gang activity to dodge their responsibility and that is not accurate.”

Coffman was responding to an Aug. 5 email forward originally from Red Banyon, a public relations firm hired by CBZ Management, that claimed that Tren de Aragua had been terrorizing apartment tenants and taken over the property to help facilitate their own criminal affairs. The owners of the apartment complex referenced in Coffman’s email are CBZ Management, the property management firm that owns complexes in Colorado and New York.

Red Banyon did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

Coffman seemingly brushed off a separate report put together by international law firm Perkins Coie, which found that Tren de Aragua gang members likely took over the apartment building. The law firm’s report, which was marked as “confidential,” was derived from multiple witness interviews and a review of available footage and evidence.

The Perkins Coie investigation includes images that purportedly show a CBZ employee being beaten up by gang members in November 2023.

Apartments staff, including housekeepers, were told by Tren de Aragua members that they were “working for” the gang, according to the investigation’s findings. One gang affiliate identified as “Larry” said Tren de Aragua would use vacant rooms for parties, which included drugs and child prostitution.

Responding to fraudulent apartment ads posted by gang members, new tenants to the buildings allegedly began paying rent — unbeknownst to them — directly to the gang, according to the report. One man who failed to pay rent on time was allegedly stabbed by gang members.

The investigative report was delivered via email on Aug. 9 with a message from an associate of the law firm asking the mayor and other city leaders to discuss the firm’s findings. However, a follow-up email from the associate on Aug. 15 asked Coffman and city leaders to confirm whether they had received their report — an indication that the mayor never acknowledged or responded to the law firm during that time.

An additional follow-up email was sent by the associate on Aug. 21 which again asked for city leaders to discuss the investigation’s findings. The DCNF did not find any emails from the mayor’s office that indicated a response was ever given.

The author of the Perkins Coie investigation, Markus Funk, declined to comment when reached by the DCNF.

Three days after that Aug. 15 email message, doorbell footage would be taken that set off national media attention. CBZ, the apartment buildings’ owners, now say the situation is completely out of their hands now.

“Three buildings have been taken over,” CBZ said to the DCNF. “One of [the buildings] was shut down by the city. There’s another two that’s still under control of these gangs.”

“Rent is not coming in, but it’s filled with tenants so it’s going to someone — most likely to these gangs,” CBZ continued.

In response to public accusations from the city that CBZ Management was attempting to dodge their responsibility for code violations by blaming gang activity, the company pointed to the recent closures of major name-brand stores in the area, suggesting that the community as a whole is facing consequences of Tren de Aragua’s wrath.

“Whoever is accusing CBZ of that would have to explain why there’s a Walgreens closing down right next door to these buildings. There’s a Walmart that closed down not long ago right next to these buildings,” their representative said. “They have a lot of things they’ll need to explain.”

Aurora, like many communities across the country, has felt the consequences of the unprecedented border crisis experienced under the Biden-Harris administration. Denver, a major sanctuary city just a few miles away from Aurora, accepted tens of thousands of migrants during the ongoing crisis before it was forced to pull back its services— but not before sending a number of those migrants to Aurora, to the apparent chagrin of the mayor.

Roughly 570,000 Venezuelan nationals have unlawfully crossed the U.S.-Mexico border since the beginning of the Biden administration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection. The White House has additionally authorized around 121,000 Venezuelans to be flown into the country via mass parole program and approved thousands of others via the CBP One app.

Reports of Venezuelan-related crime — organized crime, in particular — began to roll in as the migrant population in the Denver metro area continued to swell, such as when four Venezuelan nationals were indicted for a violent robbery of a Denver-area jewelry store in June, with local reports indicating the organized heist was linked to Tren de Aragua.

Local police confirmed that members of Tren de Aragua — an international crime syndicate that originated in Venezuela — have operated in Aurora. The Aurora Police Department (APD) in September said two men who were arrested for a shootout were affiliated with Tren de Aragua and another two individuals involved in the shooting were suspected of having ties with the gang.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also confirmed that all four of those individuals were Venezuelan nationals who entered the U.S. illegally during the Biden-Harris administration.

APD has identified all six men that were captured in the viral doorbell camera footage. However, it remains to be confirmed if any of those individuals are Tren de Aragua members, with an ICE spokesperson telling the DCNF that they have no additional information yet on those men.

“There has been evidence from the beginning of this,” John Fabbricatore, the Republican candidate for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Aurora, said to the DCNF. “City leaders had received emails and letters concerning the growth of Tren de Aragua in certain parts of Aurora, Colorado.”

“Leaders chose to ignore those warnings for political purposes and did not reach out to neighborhood residents to provide a safe and secure environment,” Fabbricatore continued.

The Republican candidate has increasingly sparred with Coffman over the threat of Tren de Aragua in the city. He recently posted a video he took of Coffman on X, which shows the mayor appearing to say that the situation in one area of Aurora had only gotten better because of the presence of private security.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman says he will not attend Trump's rally and hopes that the visit to Aurora will show the former president that his claims are inaccurate. Yet, in a video I took Saturday at MLK library in Aurora, Coffman admits how bad Colfax has gotten behind closed… pic.twitter.com/xLl3DantVu

— John Fabbricatore (@JohnE_Fabb) October 8, 2024

Fabbricatore, who spent a career as an ICE field office director, said that Aurora is handicapped in its ability to fully take on illegal migrant crime because of Colorado’s status as a sanctuary state. Policies signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Polis prevent the Aurora Police Department from fully cooperating with federal immigration authorities — with the problem only being exacerbated by a major sanctuary city such as Denver being just a few miles away.

A slate of Denver suburbs have since been actively considering litigation against the Colorado government for the sanctuary laws, arguing that the policies have only served to protect criminals.

The Colorado governor initially pushed back on allegations that gang members had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, with a Polis spokesperson claiming in August that “this purported invasion is largely a feature of [Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky’s] imagination.”

In the weeks since the statement was made and more evidence has surfaced of Tren de Aragua’s activity in the City of Aurora, Jurinksy said it was a shame Polis did not do more at the time.

“The truth has been and will continue to come out,” Jurinsky said to the DCNF. “I find it very sad that the Governor couldn’t put politics aside and reach out to another elected official who was asking for help, specifically from him.”

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Paxton asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou to hand over data on roughly 454,300 Texas registered voters who have never had their citizenship verified, according to a letter submitted by Paxton’s office. The demand, Paxton says, is part of his effort to ensure compliance with federal and state election laws against non-citizen participation in elections.

“Although federal and state law prohibits non-citizens from voting, 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 — a common sense measure to identify illegal registration,” Paxton wrote to Jaddou. “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.”

“For these reasons, Texans are increasingly concerned about the possibility of non-citizen voting, and I have a responsibility to uphold the integrity of our elections,” the Republican attorney general continued.

As part of Paxton’s investigation into the extent to which non-citizens have unlawfully registered to vote or have already voted in Texas, the attorney general obtained the list of roughly 454,300 registered voters from the Texas Secretary of State’s office who purportedly have not had their citizenship verified.

“Although I have no doubt the vast majority of the voters on the list are citizens who are eligible to vote, I am equally certain that Texans have no way of knowing whether or not any of the voters on the list are noncitizens who are ineligible to vote,” Paxton said.

The attorney general explained how a recent Texas Secretary of State audit confirmed that there were more than 1,300 non-citizens registered to vote in four counties that were chosen at random.

Citizenship status is automatically verified when Texas residents use their driver’s license or other state-issued ID card to register to vote, Paxton explained. This verification is necessary, he said, because non-citizens lawfully living in the state cannot vote, but they can legally apply for and obtain a driver’s license or ID card.

The individuals on Paxton’s list allegedly did not use a driver’s license or another ID to register to vote, and their information could not be gathered by the Texas Department of Public Safety, resulting in their unverified status, Paxton said. The attorney general is giving USCIS until Oct. 17 to comply with his demands.

Paxton’s letter follows other legal efforts across the country to ensure voter integrity, specifically regarding the threat of non-citizen participation in elections. The Arizona Secretary of State was sued last week for allegedly refusing to hand over the names of 200,000 registered voters who had not provided proof of their citizenship.

USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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