A Lawrence woman is making national headlines for being detained 30 hours by U.S. custom officers after admitting that she had voted in a Lawrence City Commission and school board election, despite not being a U.S. citizen.

An investigation by the nonprofit news site Propublica highlighted the woman’s case, and said her detention marks an escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to find non-citizens who have voted in U.S. elections.

Propublica said the case is noteworthy because it shows that U.S. custom agents at the Detroit airport had access to the woman’s voting record. A transcript of the interview conducted by customs officers in Detroit shows that they specifically asked the woman whether she had voted in the Nov. 7, 2023, local elections in Lawrence. The woman – Propublica only identified her as Estelle – said that she had voted in that election, saying that a driver’s license clerk had told her she was eligible to vote in the local election when she had recently renewed her license with the state.

It wasn’t immediately clear how customs officers at the Detroit airport became aware of Estelle’s voting record, but Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew told Propublica that he received an administrative subpoena from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on March 23 asking for the woman’s voter registration application and voting records.

In an interview with the Journal-World on Thursday, Shew said the March 23 subpoena came after Estelle already had been detained. As for how customs officials had Estelle’s voting history available to them when she was traveling through the Detroit airport, Shew said he did not know.

Shew said he’s had no additional contact with Customs and Border Protection after complying with the administrative subpoena. However, Shew said it is not difficult for anyone – including the federal government – to get the history of when someone has voted.

“Anyone can file an open records request to get the file of voters, and that includes voter history,” Shew said. “Any entity can do that, and lots do.”

Shew said such requests are common from political candidates and political parties. The federal government could request that file as well, although Shew said his office never received a request from CPB for Douglas County’s full voter file. However, the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office also would have been able to provide that information to the federal government.

What Shew did turn over to federal officials was files related to Estelle, which included her voter registration status, any party affiliation and elections in which she had voted. Shew said he redacted several pieces of information from her file, including her driver’s license number, and any other information that the Kansas Open Records Act allows to be redacted.

While the federal officials did not seek Estelle’s information through the Kansas Open Records Act, Shew said he and the county’s attorney decided to treat the administrative subpoena like a Kansas Open Records Act request.

An administrative subpoena is different than a subpoena issued by a court. An entity served with an administrative subpoena can generally choose to challenge the subpoena in court, rather than immediately complying with the subpoena. Shew, though, said he and the county’s legal counsel determined that since the information sought was consistent with what any member of the public could ask for through an open records request, that a challenge wasn’t warranted.

“If it was an administrative subpoena asking for everybody’s Social Security number, that would have been a different conversation,” Shew said.

The March 23 administrative subpoena was the first that Shew had ever received for voter information. He said his office has not received any additional subpoenas since that March 23 subpoena. Shew said his policy going forward will be to comply with administrative subpoenas that seek information that is available through the Kansas Open Records Act.

Estelle was in the Detroit airport during a layover on a return trip from her native France, where she had been visiting her sick father, Propublica reported. She was detained by customs officials for 30 hours, including an overnight stay in a detention cell at the airport. After more than 30 hours in custody, she was released, Propublica reported.

The federal government started deportation proceedings against the woman, but an immigration judge canceled her removal proceedings after her attorney spoke with the Department of Homeland Security about her case.

What’s next for Estelle is unclear, but the case already has sparked some reflection locally on what the next steps should be for election officials. Shew said it is noteworthy that Estelle said she was told at the state’s motor vehicle office that as a green card holder – there is no dispute that Estelle was in the country legally – she could vote in local elections. While some states allow green card holders to vote in local elections, that is not allowed in Kansas.

Shew, who is active at the national level in election administration organizations, said many of the cases of illegal voting involve green card holders who had their voter registration processed at a DMV office. Given that, Shew said it is worth considering whether additional training or new forms of communication need to be put in place when people seek to register to vote at a DMV office.

Shew has removed Estelle from the roll of registered voters in Douglas County. Shew said he is aware some residents will see the case as evidence that the U.S. has a serious problem with unauthorized people voting in elections. Shew said every instance of someone improperly being allowed to vote in an election is an issue that needs to be addressed by election officials.

Shew said he’s also supportive of efforts to try to prevent such illegal voting – such as systems that scan voter rolls looking for non-citizens – but those preventive measures must be accurate enough that they don’t flag legal voters as illegal and end up hindering a citizen’s ability to vote in an election.

Many of the systems used to scan voter rolls are only able to use the last four digits of a person’s Social Security number when trying to verify a person’s identity. Without the ability to use a full Social Security number, the instances of false positives can be high, Shew said.

“There are a lot of ‘John Smiths’ in the world, and actually a lot of John Smiths with the same birthday,” Shew said of the risks of hindering someone from voting due to a misidentification.