GOP crackdowns on noncitizen voting ensnare newly naturalized Americans

Esternita Watkins, 42, became an American citizen nearly two years ago, wearing a green dress and a big smile at her naturalization ceremony in Montgomery, Alabama.

She’d been living in the U.S. since 2015, when she arrived on a fiancée visa to marry Christopher Watkins, 54, now her husband, whom she’d met on Facebook. Soon after she earned citizenship, she registered to vote and was looking forward to casting her first ballot in this year’s presidential election. But she got a letter this month saying state Secretary of State Wes Allen had flagged her for having a noncitizen identification number and deactivated her voter registration.

To prove her citizenship and vote in November, the letter said, she would need fill out the voter registration form again.

Esternita Watkins at her naturalization ceremony in October 2022.Christopher Watkins

“I was mad, because I worked so hard to be a U.S. citizen so I can vote,” Watkins said, adding that the naturalization process had been expensive.

She was uncomfortable with the letter — it felt like something political was going on, she said — and she said she wasn’t sure she wanted to register again.

With Republican officials around the country like Allen putting a fresh focus on preventing noncitizens from voting — which is already illegal and rare — it’s naturalized Americans like Esternita Watkins who will be most affected by such voter roll purges, voting rights advocates and attorneys say.

"Maybe the first time an election official tried doing this, you could say, OK, they didn't really think it through," said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, a voting rights group in Washington, D.C. "But they keep doing the same thing, even though they know that every single time what happens is that thousands and thousands of naturalized citizens are targeted and accused of being fraudulent noncitizens voting, being accused of committing felonies, having their citizenship status placed into question."

Allen announced he had put 3,251 voter registrations on track for removal in mid-August as part of a new process that flags anyone on the state voter rolls with a noncitizen identification number. Allen shared the list with the attorney general for "further investigation and possible criminal prosecution," his office said in a release.

“Every single naturalized citizen in Alabama has an immigration number, every single one,” Lang said.

According to the latest data available from the Department of Homeland Security, 3,998 people were naturalized in Alabama in 2022. The year before, 1,614 people became U.S. citizens in Alabama.

Allen is among a spate of Republican officials who have sought to crack down on noncitizen voting ahead of the presidential election. Officials in Texas, Virginia and Ohio have recently said they are removing noncitizens from their voter rolls, while House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has championed legislation to require documentary proof of citizenship.

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have falsely claimed that voting by noncitizens is widespread and that Democrats want to let them vote in November.

Voting rights advocates and experts say there's little evidence that noncitizens register or vote in any great numbers.

Allen acknowledged in a news release announcing the process that it was possible that some naturalized citizens would get caught up in the search but said they could fill out a form and re-register to vote.

Watkins already proved her citizenship when she registered to vote two years ago by showing her certification of naturalization, her husband said, adding that yet another form was a "burden."

Christopher Watkins said the whole process amounted to voter suppression.

Efforts to uncover why his wife ended up on the list were fruitless, he said. Local officials urged him to call Allen's office, which said she had been flagged for a traffic violation. But Esternita Watkins doesn't drive, he said.

“I was burning up,” Christopher Watkins said. “This Wes Allen, what gives him the right to deem her not a citizen?”

The letter Esternita Watkins received from the county said she must be registered to vote two weeks before the election, but when he was pressed by NBC News, Allen said eligible voters could update their registration on Election Day.

"This update can be done by completing a form or going online. This step may be accomplished even at the polling place on election day," he said in a statement.

The letter Esternita Watkins received from the county, which was shared with NBC News, didn’t mention that option.

A coalition of 11 voting and immigrant rights advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the Campaign Legal Center and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, argue that Allen’s process violates federal voting law.

The groups argued that the new process violates the National Voter Registration Act for a variety of reasons, including removing voters from the rolls too close to Election Day and discriminating against naturalized citizens. They demanded Alabama stop the process and requested a host of documents about the program’s development and use.

Allen hasn’t yet responded to their letter, said Lang, of the Campaign Legal Center. Allen told NBC News in a statement that he “will not bow down to threats from ultra-liberal activist groups who will stop at nothing in their quest to see noncitizens remain on Alabama’s voter rolls.”

In his statement, Allen also said he’d sought better data from the federal government but was refused. 

“Repeated requests to the United States Federal Government for assistance in obtaining a listing of noncitizens currently residing in Alabama were denied," he said. "This lack of cooperation led my team and I to approach the issue differently."