(An IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH report) – Four Republican states have agreed to help the Trump administration gain access to state driver’s license data through a nationwide law enforcement computer network as part of the administration’s hunt for alleged non-citizen voters. The Trump administration said as recently as October that federal officials wanted to obtain driver’s license records through the network. The commitment from officials in Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio comes as part of a settlement agreement filed on Friday in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit was originally brought by the states last year alleging the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to help states verify voter eligibility. The settlement, between the states and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, requires the federal department to continue its development of a powerful citizenship verification program known as SAVE. Earlier this year, federal officials repurposed SAVE into a program capable of scanning millions of state voter records for instances of non-citizen registered voters.

In return, the states have agreed to support Homeland Security’s efforts to access the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, an obscure computer network that typically allows law enforcement agencies to search driver’s license records across state lines. Nlets — as the system is known — lets police officers easily look up the driving records of out-of-state motorists. The Trump administration and some Republican election officials have promoted the changes to SAVE as a useful tool to identify potential noncitizen voters, and Indiana had already agreed to provide voter records. Critics, including some Democrats, say the Trump administration is building a massive database of U.S. residents that President Donald Trump or a future president could use for spying or targeting political enemies.

Stateline reported last week, before the settlement agreement was filed in court, that Homeland Security publicly confirmed it wants to connect Nlets to SAVE. A notice published Oct. 31 in the Federal Register said driver’s licenses are the most widely used form of identification, and that by working with states and national agencies, including Nlets, “SAVE will use driver’s license and state identification card numbers to check and confirm identity information.” A federal official also previously told a virtual meeting of state election officials in May that Homeland Security was seeking “to avoid having to connect to 50 state databases” and wanted a “simpler solution,” such as Nlets, according to government records published by the transparency group American Oversight. The new settlement lays out the timeline for how the Trump administration could acquire the four states’ records.

Within 90 days of the execution of the agreement, the four states may provide Homeland Security with 1,000 randomly selected driver’s license records from their state for verification as part of a quality improvement process for SAVE. The agreement could pave the way for Republican officials in other states to provide access to license data. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said in a statement to Stateline that the settlement agreement provides another layer of election integrity and protection as officials seek to ensure only eligible voters are registered. He didn’t directly address questions about Nlets access.

Two weeks before the Nov. 5, 2024, election, Pate issued guidance to Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who were identified by the secretary of state’s office as potential non-citizens. In March, Pate said his office gained access to the SAVE database and found 277 of those people were confirmed to not have U.S. citizenship — just under 12% of the individuals identified as potential non-citizens.