Federal judge blocks Trump administration's noncitizen voter investigations in nine states

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland issued an order on Wednesday requiring the Trump administration to stop investigations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin into whether noncitizens are registered to vote. The judge said the government’s effort relied on "voluminous and unreliable" data and risked intimidating groups that assist voters. The order will stay in force until after polls close on Nov. 3, and it was temporarily stayed until Friday to allow the administration an opportunity to appeal.

The lawsuit was brought by the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United, the Voto Latino Foundation and local officials in San Francisco and Santa Clara County. In response, the Department of Homeland Security said it remains focused on "removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens" and affirmed that it has no plans to question or investigate people believed to be U.S. citizens.

Legal filings revealed that investigators were instructed to target naturalized citizens to verify whether they had voted before obtaining citizenship, using voter-roll lists compiled from state and local sources and publicly available information. Martínez-Olguín noted that there is no federal database of citizenship status and that the rapid "surge" phase, which began in late August, required agents to review each flagged individual in no more than 12 minutes, increasing the likelihood of error.

The Department of Justice has sought detailed voter-roll data from states that have declined to provide it, losing lawsuits in all 30 cases brought so far. The judge observed that the administration’s attempts to obtain data through "unreliable commercial versions of voter roll data" further compromised accuracy.

Plaintiffs argued that some U.S. citizens were mistakenly identified and investigated, creating a chilling effect on participation in campaign events and poll monitoring. Martínez-Olguín described those concerns as "intimidation" that has deterred civic engagement.

"It was clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people’s homes weeks before an election," said Beau Tremitiere, attorney for the unions and voter group.

The investigation, dubbed the "Unlawful Voter Initiative," was disclosed last month after a whistleblower report released by Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla.