OPINION:
The Mexican drug cartel-aligned Biden-Harris administration was sort of hiding its grand strategy of infiltrating America with millions of illegal migrants while getting as many voting as possible by Nov. 5.
But Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department tipped us off.
The department’s progressive activists, from the same corrupt house that organized the persecution of former President Donald Trump and sued Alabama and then Virginia in federal court. The crime in the two states was to follow state and federal laws by removing noncitizens from voter rolls. The administration’s message to illegal migrants is clear: Register to vote, and we’ll make sure you do.
Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation’s election law expert, tells me Mr. Garland’s legal stance is simply wrong. It’s not logical for Mr. Garland to imply that he can declare voting rights for noncitizens under one law when that same law and other federal laws explicitly say it is illegal for them to register and vote.
The authoritarian progressive White House has unleashed the FBI on parents, pro-life demonstrators and whistleblowers. Why not direct the Justice Department to target local officials who want to protect election integrity from devious Democrats?
On Oct. 25, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered Virginia to stop removing some 1,500 designated noncitizens. Virginia immediately filed an appeal.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden have a lot invested. House Republican committee chairmen have taken testimony from Border Patrol officers. They said the vast majority of millions of invaders — potential voters — were trafficked by murderous drug cartels who are making billions of dollars in shakedown fees. More cash to send us more deadly fentanyl.
Democrats are filled with hoaxes and ironies. The odd twist in this adventure is that Mr. Garland is commanding states to violate other federal laws and their own state laws to abide by his interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
Mr. Garland argues that the law bans culling voter rolls 90 days before an election. In other words, wait 90 days before an election and then register illegally and vote illegally.
Let’s look at laws banning noncitizen voters.
Virginia: The law is clear, according to its Department of Elections. “To register to vote in Virginia, you must be a United States citizen,” its website says.
That’s why Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is having noncitizens removed from the voter rolls.
The federal laws:
In 1996, a prescient House speaker, Newt Gingrich, guided through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It’s as if Mr. Gingrich anticipated the day Democrats would open the southern border to millions of unknowns and then work to put them on voter rolls immediately. That day came Jan. 20, 2021.
Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the reform bill into law. This was nearly 30 years ago, when the Democratic Party was not dominated by “woke” progressives who worship ideology and money, not America.
The law states that “it shall be unlawful for any alien to vote in any election” for federal office. A violator can be fined and sent to prison for up to one year. And any alien [noncitizen] who votes illegally “is deportable.”
Heritage’s Mr. von Spakovsky told me that the National Voter Registration Act on which the administration relies does not bar states from removing noncitizen voters from the rolls.
Mr. von Spakovsky wrote in a Heritage memo: “The plain text of the statute does not require states to keep an individual registered who was never eligible to be registered in the first place. … Any interpretation of the NVRA that would require states to keep an alien registered to vote when both state and federal criminal laws bar an alien from registering would render the NVRA unconstitutional.”
In fact, he says, the law created a universal federal form for voter registration in all states. The form states that a person must be a citizen to register and vote.
“Are you a citizen of the United States of America?” the form asks. The applicant must sign, attesting, “I am a United States Citizen.”
Mr. van Spakovsky says the 90-day limit cited by Mr. Garland does not prohibit a person’s removal for “correction of registration records” — which would cover someone who should have never been on the rolls in the first place.
Two federal courts in Florida ruled in 2012 that states can remove aliens without violating the 90-day rule.
Indeed, on Oct. 11, the day he was sued by the administration, Mr. Youngkin expressed shock because no Justice Department had ever filed such a lawsuit. Besides, a 2006 state law supported by both Democrats and Republicans requires removing aliens.
“Virginians — and Americans — will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy,” Mr. Youngkin said.
The department’s lawsuit asks the presiding judge to command Virginia election officials to take what the administration sees as corrective steps. Included in the list is a half-hearted supposed cure for illegal voting: Telling noncitizens once again that they can’t vote. But since they presumably knew this and registered anyway, what good would that do?
If Mr. Garland wins this case, it seems to me that Virginia election workers should just toss out the ballot of any alien and refer the person for federal prosecution. No one is above the law.
* Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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