Just a couple of days ago we noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had "mistakenly" granted citizenship to over 850 immigrants from "countries of concern to national security" even after they had been flagged for deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (see "DHS Admits "Mistakenly" Granting Citizenship To 858 Immigrants From 'Countries Of Concern To National Security'"). Now, newly disclosed DHS emails, indicating a rush to "process as many [citizenship] cases as possible due to the election year," may help explain why so many "mistakes" were made.

A recent letter from Senator Chuck Grassley (R - Iowa) to the DHS, expressed concerns over the newly revealed emails and whether there may be efforts within U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) to naturalize as many potential voters as possible before election day. Per Grassley's letter (which can read in it's entirely below), someone in the Houston USCIS field office sent the following email to office staff asking employees to consider working overtime in order to process as many naturalization applications as possible before the election:

“The Field Office due to the election year needs to process as many of their N-400 cases as possible between now and FY 2016.” “If you have cases in this category or other pending, you are encouraged to take advantage of the OT if you can. This will be an opportunity to move your pending naturalization cases. If you have not volunteered for OT, please consider and let me know if you are interested.”

Another person within the Houston field office forwarded the message saying "it's the end of the year crunch time!"

“I couldn’t have said it better! It’s the end of the year crunch time, so let’s get crunchy! Go Team Houston! Thanks for all your hard work!”

Grassley's letter to Jeh Johnson of the DHS, blasts efforts to hastily grant citizenship as "an attempt to create as many new citizen voters as possible."

"We write to express serious concern about an apparent push by your department to rush the adjudication of naturalization applications before the upcoming presidential election, presumably in an attempt to create aa many new citizen voters as possible."

Grassley also points out that this is not the first time efforts have been taken to rush the approval of citizenship applications for election purposes. Apparently similar efforts were made ahead of the 1996 election when citizenship grants soared by nearly 4x.

"Unfortunately, we have been down this road before. In the year preceding the 1996 presidential election the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the predecessor agency for USCIS, established the notorious "Citizenship USA" (CUSA) initiative. Previously, the INS had been granting citizenship to 300,000 to 400,000 aliens per year, but under CUSA that increased to 1.1 million cases. The apparent push to naturalize as many aliens as possible in time for them to vote in the election resulted in cut corners that endangered national security and public safety."

Any other election year this news might be shocking but this year, for some reason, we're not terribly surprised.

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Senator Chuck Grassley's letter to the Department of Homeland Security