Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird announced Monday that Iowa, alongside three other states, has reached a settlement agreement allowing state officials to access a federal immigration database to verify citizenship status of voters for the next 20 years.
The settlement includes an agreement by the states to provide state driver’s license data to the federal government, Stateline reported Monday.
Bird, as well as Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, were plaintiffs in the case alongside officials from Florida, Ohio and Indiana. The lawsuit challenged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which contains the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for allegedly withholding information unlawfully about people registered to vote in states including Iowa that were flagged by state officials for potentially not having U.S. citizenship.
Bird celebrated the agreement as a way to ensure Iowa elections’ integrity.
“Only American citizens can vote in Iowa elections,” Bird said in a statement. “This agreement with the Trump administration will help Iowa safeguard the integrity of our elections for years to come by preventing an illegal vote to cancel out the vote of Iowa citizens.”
Bird and Pate filed their lawsuit on this issue in December 2024, shortly after the 2024 general election. Two weeks before the Nov. 5, 2024 election, Pate issued guidance to Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who were identified by the Secretary of State’s Office as potential noncitizens, as they had reported to the state Department of Transportation or another government entity that they were not U.S. citizens in the past 12 years and went on to register to vote.
Pate said the call to challenge these voters’ ballots was necessary because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, denied the state permission to verify the citizenship status through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. While federal officials confirmed at a federal court hearing in 2024 there were at least 250 people registered to vote in Iowa who appeared to be noncitizens, but did not share further information with Iowa officials.
The Iowa Attorney General’s Office said in a news release that DHS had told the Iowa secretary of state, “Iowa had hundreds of noncitizens on our voter rolls, but they would not tell us who they were, nor grant us access to the database that would give us the information.”
In March, Pate said his office gained access to the SAVE database and found 277 of the 2,176 people flagged to have their 2024 ballots challenged were confirmed to not have U.S. citizenship — just under 12% of the individuals identified as potential noncitizens. Voting or registering to vote as a noncitizen in U.S. elections is a felony in Iowa, punishable by up to five years in prison and fines of $750 to $7,500.
With the DHS settlement agreement, reached with the department and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem under the Trump administration, Iowa and other states will retain access to SAVE for 20 years through a binding agreement. The AG’s office wrote: “Iowa will have free access to the cutting-edge technology necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting in Iowa elections” under the agreement.
The Iowa Secretary of State’s Office reported Iowa will be one of four states participating in a pilot program with DHS under the settlement, receiving “expanded access” to the SAVE database while also providing more information to the federal system through bulk uploads “which allows election officials to upload batch data, including Social Security numbers, to verify SAVE information against voter registration lists.”
Neither Pate nor Bird mentioned in their statements that the agreement includes providing Iowa driver’s license data to the federal government.
According to the settlement, the state of Iowa will gain access to SAVE within 90 days of the Dec. 1 agreement, meaning the state will be able to use the database for voter citizenship verification during the 2026 primary and general elections.
During the 2025 legislative session, Gov. Kim Reynolds also signed a law allowing the Secretary of State’s Office to contract with federal and state agencies as well as private entities for voter roll verification and maintenance. Pate said the law will give his office better access to tools like SAVE and other resources to verify registered voters’ eligibility to participate in Iowa elections. The measure also creates a process to set a voter’s registration status as “unconfirmed” when state or county officials have received “reliable” information that the person is not qualified to vote. It also allows registered voters to be challenged over their citizenship status at the polls.
Pate said in a statement Monday the agreement provides his office with “another layer of election integrity and protection — the ability to audit our lists and ensure only eligible voters are registered to vote and voting in Iowa elections.”
“Protecting the integrity of Iowa elections and ensuring only eligible Iowa voters participate in Iowa elections continue to be priorities of our office, as does encouraging voter participation from every eligible Iowa voter,” Pate said. “We continue to take additional steps to audit Iowa’s voter lists and verify that the information is correct and up to date. The SAVE program provides us with critical information, but we must also continue to utilize information from other state and federal partners to maintain clean and accurate lists.”
