Judge Curbs DHS Door-Knocking Hunt for Noncitizen Voters in 9 States
A federal judge found DHS home visits questioning people about voting likely violate the Voting Rights Act and limited them in nine states through Election Day.
A federal judge in California has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to scale back a door-to-door campaign in which federal agents questioned residents about their immigration status and whether they had voted. The judge found the practice likely violates the Voting Rights Act by intimidating citizens who help others vote. The preliminary injunction, issued late Wednesday, covers nine states and runs until polls close on Election Day, Nov. 3.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California barred immigration authorities from conducting what CBS News described as “elections-related field operations and field interviews” when officials know, or should reasonably suspect, that the people involved are U.S. citizens. She delayed the order until 5 p.m. Friday so the federal government has time to appeal.
What the court decided
The case was brought by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, two affiliated nurses’ unions, together with the Voto Latino Foundation, a group that works to register Latino voters, and the local governments of San Francisco and Santa Clara County, according to the Epoch Times and Sinclair-owned Fox17. The unions argued that the home visits could frighten their members away from voter outreach and other election work.
The order applies in these states:
- California
- Connecticut
- Georgia
- Missouri
- Nevada
- New York
- Pennsylvania
- Washington
- Wisconsin
The judge concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim under a provision of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 civil rights law, that prohibits efforts to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” people who assist voters or take part in voter mobilization. According to the Epoch Times, she found an “objectively reasonable fear” that the agents’ tactics could intimidate citizens engaged in that work.
The ruling was narrower than an outright ban. CBS News reported that the judge noted the plaintiffs had not claimed, and the court had not found, that federal investigations into unlawful voting are themselves illegal. The objection, she wrote, was to the way citizens were being investigated. Fox17 reported that the order also restricts certain operations based entirely on records from DHS’s voter-matching process when the target is known or reasonably suspected to be a citizen.
Concerns about flawed data
Much of the ruling focused on how DHS built its lists of people to visit. The operation was carried out by Homeland Security Investigations, the department’s main investigative arm, which has said it analyzed publicly available voter registration records to identify potential noncitizen registrants. CBS News reported that the lists drew on both government agency data and commercially available data.
The judge called the initial target list “voluminous and unreliable,” according to Fox17. She noted that no federal database tracks citizenship status and wrote that “even under the best conditions, there is a high likelihood of error in review,” the Epoch Times reported. Agents were directed to complete at least 40 reviews of suspected cases, and Fox17 reported they had no more than 12 minutes per person to rule out citizenship using commercial databases. The judge wrote that the time pressure would further increase the risk of mistakes.
Fox17 reported that DHS itself acknowledged that similar names, incomplete records and outdated citizenship information could produce errors. The judge pointed to examples of people flagged because they shared similar names with others, and of naturalized citizens wrongly identified as immigrant visa holders.
“DHS built its lists on bad data,” Beau Tremitiere, counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonprofit legal group involved in the case, told CBS News. CBS said it had asked DHS for comment. The Epoch Times said the Justice Department had not responded to its request for comment before publication.
Why it matters
The ruling lands less than two weeks before the midterm elections and amid an intensifying federal push against alleged noncitizen voting, which President Donald Trump has made a priority of his second term. CBS News noted there is little evidence to support the president’s claims that noncitizen voting is widespread.
HSI had posted photos and videos of agents approaching homes in multiple states. The administration says the effort is aimed at noncitizen voting, while critics say it risks intimidating eligible voters. CBS News had published its own investigation into the operation earlier on the day the ruling came down.
The Justice Department says 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud offenses since the start of the Trump administration, CBS News reported. In California, the department said 28 lawful permanent residents have been charged with election-related offenses, including making false statements on naturalization applications, according to Fox17; some also face fraudulent voter registration charges. CBS described the California arrests as involving several dozen green card holders. None of those charged has been convicted in the cases described.
In a separate lawsuit filed Oct. 15, the Justice Department asked a federal court to require California to set aside mail-in ballots linked to more than 20,000 voters that federal investigators identified as “likely noncitizens” until their citizenship can be verified. California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized that suit as an attempt to disenfranchise voters before Election Day, the Epoch Times reported.
What comes next
The administration can ask an appeals court to intervene before the order takes effect at 5 p.m. Friday. None of the outlets reviewed had reported an appeal as of Thursday. Unless it is changed on appeal, the injunction will remain in force in the nine states until polls close on Nov. 3, while the broader lawsuit continues.
