Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who helped Donald Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, has joined forces with far-right anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into stoking unfounded fears of non-US citizens voting in federal elections.
Launched by powerful figures on the right, the effort includes members of Trump’s inner circle, rightwing nativist groups that promote restricting legal immigration and election-denying activists like Mitchell. Leaders of some of the prominent groups have become active on Capitol Hill, even appearing alongside the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to introduce a bill requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The effort to crack down on non-citizen voting comes as the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which alleges a covert plot to replace white populations with immigrants of color, has entered the mainstream. Figures such as Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News anchor and one of the theory’s most visible promoters, frequently warn that high levels of immigration will help Democrats win elections.
At the heart of the push is Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a group of more than 70 organizations, according to its website, that claims to promote “citizen voting” and hosts webinars for grassroots activists.
Mitchell, who announced the group’s formation on 8 May, is among its founding members.
Affiliates of Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), the conservative power-building group that underwrites Mitchell’s election activism, form key roles in the coalition, including former Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Action.
The hardline anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform, which the racial justice organization Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group, is also enrolled.
And one of the coalition’s steering groups – the recently formed Immigration Accountability Project, with leaders from organizations in Mitchell’s network as well as the anti-immigration movement – illustrates the increasingly close relationship between election deniers and the nativist far right.
Some cities like San Francisco and DC allow non-US citizens to vote in hyper-local elections. But evidence suggests that non-citizens, who are already prohibited from voting in federal elections and could face felony charges and deportation for doing so, rarely vote in federal elections. That has not stopped groups like Immigration Accountability Project and Only Citizens Vote Coalition, which claims that “millions of illegal aliens and noncitizens may be able to vote in November”, from elevating the issue.
Chris Chmielenski, president of Immigration Accountability Project, acknowledged in an interview that there is little evidence to suggest non-citizens vote with any regularity in US elections – but maintained that the possibility was enough to warrant concern.
“We have this large group of foreign-born individuals that are living in the country, and more than 50% of that group are actually non-citizens,” said Chmielenski. “They haven’t gone through the citizenship process, but because they’re here, they’re gaining access to voter-registration forms.”
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Founded and incorporated in 2023 in Mississippi as a non-profit organization, Immigration Accountability Project purports to inform “the American public about the actions, votes, and statements of their elected representatives on immigration issues”.
The group is at least partly funded by the Heritage Foundation, a powerful rightwing thinktank that on 20 May announced it had awarded the organization a grant of $100,000.
It has garnered powerful allies in the Republican party. When Johnson, as House speaker, unveiled federal legislation to require proof of citizenship to vote, the director of government relations at the organization, Rosemary Jenks, joined him and a gaggle of Trump allies on the Capitol steps.
“I wanna just do a little public service announcement here and say if you are not a citizen of the United States of America, you are ineligible to vote,” Jenks said during the media event at the Capitol as Johnson nodded along.
The group’s history underscores the ascent of the anti-immigration movement into the conservative mainstream; before forming Immigration Accountability Project, Jenks and Chmielenski worked as senior staff of the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA for more than a decade.
“NumbersUSA has a history of promoting hate,” said David Armiak, research director of the left-leaning watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, which tracks rightwing influence in politics.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, NumbersUSA was founded as a project of the white-nationalist activist John Tanton, whose communications with Holocaust deniers and disparaging comments about Latinos became a source of embarrassment for the organization. As recently as 2019, Jenks appeared on a podcast hosted by the anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.
Armiak described the push for a proof-of-citizenship requirement as forming part of a wave of restrictive voting measures – a notion Chmielenski rejects.
“It’s not a voter-suppression effort, or anything like that,” said Chmielenski. “And if individuals want to vote, I think they’ll find the elements necessary in order to demonstrate their US citizenship.”
Also on the board of Immigration Accountability Project is John Zadrozny, an attorney who served in the state department under Trump and has worked for the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Trump-allied America First Legal. Zadrozny is credited with helping draft the vision of the US state department articulated in Project 2025, the far-right presidential playbook drafted by Trump allies.
“The latest campaign, from the last few weeks, has been this ‘undocumented people are voting, we’ve got to do something about it’, but that’s just a piece of it,” said Heidi Beirich, founder of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “All these groups that we’re talking about, are in some way connected to Project 2025.”
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As the 2024 presidential election approaches, the coalition of anti-immigration and elections-focused conservative activists will probably ramp up their work.
The rhetoric surrounding “citizen only” voting has already moved out of the fringes and into the conservative mainstream, with figures such as Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state who rebuffed Trump’s attempt to overturn the election there in 2020, elevating the issue.
Fears of non-citizen voting have found political expression at the state level, too.
In Wisconsin, Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri and South Carolina, voters will consider ballot measures this November to clarify that non-US citizens are ineligible from voting in any elections – including local ones.
“When [anti-immigration groups] merge forces with the Conservative Partnership Institute or Cleta Mitchell, and the folks more broadly that are advocating against non-citizen voting,” said Armiak, “it seems like it’s a ploy to suppress the vote.”
