A federal judge in Maryland ordered the Department of Homeland Security to set aside its new policy that blocked outside groups from showing up at naturalization ceremonies to register newly minted citizens to vote.
U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson said the Voter Assistance Ban seems to tread on the groups’ rights under the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment by “undermining” their ability to register people.
In a ruling late Monday, Judge Abelson, a Biden appointee, ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency that oversees naturalization, to suspend its policy and allow nongovernmental groups to conduct voter drives.
Voter sign-up tables had been a staple of many naturalization ceremonies, with many new citizens eager to exercise the most fundamental right of political participation.
Homeland Security has long preferred that the sign-ups be done by a state or local agency, but had allowed nonprofit groups to fill in where no official agency could attend.
The Trump administration moved to change that policy last August, effectively banning nongovernmental organizations from showing up to register new voters.
USCIS had justified the change in policy, announced last August, by saying it wanted to enforce more uniformity at naturalization ceremonies and reduce the burden on the agency. It said new citizens were still free to register at their convenience, particularly with the proliferation of online options.
But Judge Abelson saw more sinister motives in the changes. He sided with the League of Women Voters and the National Council of Jewish Women, which sued to restart voter registration drives at naturalization ceremonies.
The judge said USCIS appeared to have an obsessive focus on noncitizen voting that spilled over into the changes for new citizens.
“The various statements by government officials leading up to the ban that NCJW cites further support this conclusion, including USCIS Director Joseph Edlow’s statement that immigrants threaten to reshape the nation electorally by becoming citizens,” the judge wrote.
Judge Abelson tied the change to what’s become known as the “replacement theory,” which is the belief that the massive wave of immigration — most of it illegal — during the Biden administration was an attempt to skew America’s demographics and alter the country’s voting patterns.
He pointedly noted that the voter registration changes came about the same time that USCIS eliminated the requirement that new citizens be given a copy of the Constitution and a guide to federal elections.
He also said USCIS changed the language in its policy from “naturalization candidate” to “alien” — even for cases when someone has taken the oath and already become a citizen.
