INS Is Ignoring Records Request, Congressman Says

WASHINGTON — A congressional committee chairman accused immigration officials on Monday of ignoring his demand for citizenship records to resolve the voter fraud charges brought by former Rep. Robert K. Dornan and demanded their immediate release.

Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the Immigration and Naturalization Service was stalling in responding to his request that it check the citizenship of all of Orange County’s 1.3 million voters.

“The deadline is over. They are out of time,” Thomas said in a Capitol news conference. “We are not willing to allow the INS to stall in carrying out its clear responsibility to assist the House in protecting the integrity of American elections.”

Thomas said he wouldn’t wait much longer.

“If the INS is unwilling to do this,” Thomas said, “we will do the work ourselves.”

The request, made more than a week ago, is central to Dornan’s campaign to unseat Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), who beat him last November by 984 votes. The Garden Grove Republican blamed his loss on what he described as widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and illegal immigrants.

To date, the California secretary of state has determined that 303 people registered to vote before they became citizens and then cast ballots in the Dornan-Sanchez race.

INS spokesman Eric Andrus said Monday that the agency was still trying to determine whether it could comply with Thomas’ unprecedented request. Last week, an INS attorney told Thomas that there were “inherent limitations” in INS data that could make his request difficult to fulfill.

“We take this very seriously,” Andrus said. “We will answer the committee as soon as we can.”

Thomas called the news conference after what he said was a tepid response from the INS.

The agency clearly has the ability to do the work, he said, and its failure suggests that the agency is playing politics. The INS is part of the executive branch of the federal government, and answers to President Clinton. Thomas is part of a Republican-controlled Congress.

“It would be unfortunate if the INS were introducing partisan politics,” Thomas said.

Thomas also said he would speak to Sanchez about her refusal to comply with a subpoena sent by Dornan for her campaign records. Although the subpoena was approved by the House Oversight Committee, Sanchez made clear last week that she would ignore it because she regarded it as unconstitutional.

“I am going to talk to Rep. Sanchez,” Thomas said. “I cannot believe she is not interested in finding out to what extent fraud occurred in this election.”

“We’re all ears,” Sanchez aide Steve Jost said.

Thomas would not say whether he intended to have Sanchez held in contempt of Congress.

“There are any number of options,” he said.

In his letter to the INS 10 days ago, Thomas asked the agency to check the list of Orange County’s registered voters against its own immigration records. The request was nearly identical to one made in March by California Secretary of State Bill Jones.

In a reply last week, U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Andrew Fois outlined the limitations that he said plagued INS records.

For example, Fois said that because INS records identify people only by name and date of birth, they might produce “false matches” with voter registration files.

One problem is that the INS does not maintain records on native-born U.S. citizens. Therefore, it is impossible to determine whether a person not in their records is a native citizen or an illegal immigrant. Dornan has claimed that many of the voters for whom the INS had no records probably are illegal immigrants.

On Monday, Thomas dismissed such protests. He said it was essential that Congress get to the bottom of what happened in the Sanchez-Dornan race.

“We are concerned about the sanctity of the vote,” Thomas said. “There is no greater concern the voter has.”