PHOENIX — The state’s chief election official has a message for the Department of Justice: We don’t need to be reminded to follow laws that ensure only citizens cast ballots in Arizona.

“Arizona has a long history of adherence to voter registration requirements,” Adrian Fontes wrote Monday in a letter to William Mohrman, an attorney in the agency’s Civil Rights Division. “Indeed, Arizona has required those registering to vote to provide satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship for more than two decades.”

This came a week after Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who is Mohrman’s boss, sent a letter to Fontes threatening to prosecute election workers in Arizona who knowingly leave noncitizens on voter rolls or facilitate them receiving and casting ballots.

Dhillon warned that federal law “obviously makes it unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.”

“State election officers, including the chief election officer of the state, could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting violations of various federal laws,” she wrote, such as allowing aliens to falsely and willfully represent themselves as citizens and to actually vote in federal races.

Dhillon, in that July 7 letter, said her agency is willing to assist Arizona in complying with federal laws. And she asked him to respond to Mohrman, explaining how he would do that.

Fontes, in his response, said there’s nothing to tell.

“Arizona’s 15 counties will continue to carry out their duties under federal and state law to determine voter eligibility and maintain current and accurate voter registration lists,” he wrote.

Fontes also said that if federal officials have any questions, they are free to review the 468-page state Elections Procedures Manual — he even sent a link — which he said includes step-by-step procedures for voter registration and list maintenance.

Fontes also rebuffed offers of help from the Department of Justice.

“It can trust my office and the highly trained and dedicated election officials in each of Arizona’s 15 counties to carry out our duties in accordance with the law and the oath we all have taken,” he wrote.

President Donald Trump has reignited the issue of election security and integrity ahead of this year’s midterms. The president will deliver an address to the country on Thursday, during which the president promised to share “really, really big news” about elections.

Fontes, who has engaged with — and won — various battles with the administration, said he will be watching and willing to comment. And he has not proven shy.

“It is insulting to insinuate that the good people at our county recorders’ offices across the state are not doing their jobs correctly,” he said after receiving the letter from Dhillon last week, saying election officials will follow the law, “not directions that come from political rhetoric or intimidation.”

Fontes most recently fought in federal court with the Trump administration and its efforts to take greater control of elections.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Brnovich tossed out the Department of Justice’s demand to access the unredacted records of Arizona’s nearly 5 million registered voters. The judge concluded that the federal agency was not entitled to anything that is not already public.

More recently, another federal judge shut down a bid by the Trump administration to create a national voter registration database and then to instruct the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to those on the list.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan said that would block access to voting simply because a state “declines or fails to certify a list.”

All this comes against the backdrop of claims by Democracy Docket, founded by Democratic attorney Marc Elias, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was planning to send agents to polling places this fall.

Calli Jones, spokeswoman for Fontes, said that her office is monitoring but has heard nothing definite about such plans.