Who’s a Citizen? Don’t Ask INS

California Secretary of State Bill Jones has moved the investigation into voting irregularities in defeated Rep. Bob Dornan’s Orange County district to an unprecedented and dangerous level. In calling for the cross-referencing of each of the county’s 1.3 million registered voters with records maintained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Jones is casting an overly wide investigatory net. If not checked soon by the judicial or political process, Jones’ project will be an unwarranted intrusion on thousands of people’s lives and cause a further erosion of the people’s trust in government.

And it will be for naught, because the INS does not have the information necessary to verify (or challenge) the status of everyone who votes. The INS maintains records of immigrants, not citizens. If Jones wants to definitively identify citizenship status, he will have to search birth records in the 50 states plus other record-keeping jurisdictions, such as Puerto Rico.

The INS does maintain records of immigrants who have become naturalized citizens, but some of these records are computerized and some are not. Presumably, one would have to check records dating back at least 75 years; hundreds of thousands of such records are not computerized and are stored at dozens of locations nationwide. Furthermore, since the INS does not update its naturalization records once the process has been completed, even accurate computerized records will contain outdated information.

In addition to the criminal investigators’ efforts to cross-check the identities of the million-plus registered voters, Dornan’s privately funded political investigation, temporarily delayed by a federal court for technical reasons, is similarly about to target tens of thousands of innocent persons, citizen and immigrant alike. Using funds from his political campaign donors, the combative Republican is poised to begin gathering information about such activities as labor union membership and community college enrollment in an effort to support his claims of a broad conspiracy to deny him reelection to Congress.

The thrust and scope of Dornan’s planned investigation are mind-boggling. Besides seeking the identities of college students who have enrolled in English and civics courses, he is looking for information from the county and federal governments regarding the identity of certain persons who have been asked to serve on juries and persons who have been denied welfare. He wants special attention paid to residents of Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Anaheim--not just INS information, but IRS data as well.

Even though allegations of improprieties have been restricted to the immigrants’ rights organization Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, numerous other, unrelated organizations and individuals are also caught up in Dornan’s investigation, including the charitable arm of the Catholic Church. This information is being sought with no showing that any of these organizations have information relevant to the alleged voting irregularities.

When law enforcement agencies seek private and sensitive information, generally it is after they have shown that the information is relevant or necessary. There are strict laws, among them the federal Privacy Act, that punish government officials who misuse information gathered during investigations. Bob Dornan, however, is a private citizen. There are few restrictions on what he can do with the information he gathers. While he is not likely to win his bid for a special election to reclaim his seat from Democrat Loretta Sanchez, he is sure to try again in 1998, and there is no telling how he might use the information he gathers about voters’ personal lives.

The chilling effect of these parallel criminal and political investigations cannot be overstated. People, especially naturalized citizens and immigrants, will think twice before enrolling in community college courses, joining labor unions or seeking government benefits to which they are legally entitled, wondering if the mere fact of interacting with one of these programs might subject them or their family to political scrutiny.

As an immediate matter, the INS must reassert the bounds of the Privacy Act and allow Jones narrow access only to those limited records for which he demonstrates clear legal entitlement. Given the evidence of voting irregularities revealed to date--a registrar’s audit found 721 people who had registered before they became citizens, 442 of whom voted--the criminal investigation will proceed, but it must be narrowly conducted so as to avoid unconstitutional and illegal gathering of information. Furthermore, the criminal investigators must take pains to separate themselves from the political operatives.

A federal court is hearing challenges to Dornan’s political investigation. At the very least, it must be sharply proscribed before Dornan is able to begin creating files on his adversaries, real and imagined.