Federal Judge Curbs DHS Field Operations Hunting Noncitizen Voters in Nine States

A federal judge has placed limits on the Department of Homeland Security's pre-election field operations aimed at finding noncitizens who have voted illegally in nine states. The California judge found that the department was using flawed data and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.

In recent weeks, armed Homeland Security Investigations officers have carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalised.

In a 19-page order late on Wednesday, US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the federal government was using 'flawed' data in the initiative and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act.

Martínez-Olguín referred to a disclosure last month from a US Citizenship and Immigration Services whistleblower alleging rushed efforts to match data to create a target list of potential noncitizens on voter rolls, and that the list includes US citizens.

She also pointed to HSI's social media posts, including one that showed agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote.

The judge wrote that the government's use of unreliable and incomplete data, along with highly publicised arrests, leads to an objectively reasonable fear of law-enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote.

According to documents produced in the case, HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

Martínez-Olguín barred DHS officers in those states from conducting field operations targeting people they know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are US citizens, or operations based wholly on USCIS matching data without further investigation.

In a declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell told the judge his team manually reviews records before referring them to HSI, but acknowledged the 'low possibility' that citizens could be erroneously identified as potential aliens in federal records. He wrote that the risks were mitigated by safeguards and outweighed by the need to support the agency's law-enforcement and election-integrity mission.

It remains unclear how much effect the order will have on the federal government's highly publicised campaign to find noncitizen voters. Reviews and audits by states have consistently found voting by noncitizens to be extremely rare.

DHS said in a statement: 'DHS is laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders.' The agency said it has no plans to question or investigate people it believes to be US citizens.

The order is set to take effect on Friday and remain in effect through election night, though the federal government could appeal. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed last month by a coalition including San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, the city of San Francisco, nursing unions and the Voto Latino Foundation, litigated by Protect Democracy and the National Immigration Law Center against the DHS and the Department of Justice.

Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, said in a statement: 'Today, the courts affirmed a vital principle of our democracy: Voting is a fundamental right that citizens – whether born here or naturalized – should be able to exercise without armed government agents harassing them.' He added that 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.

A court filing by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United described naturalised citizen members who no longer wanted to attend political rallies, sign up as election poll workers, or vote in person because of the federal operations. Meanwhile the Justice Department is suing California demanding the state segregate 20,000 ballots from people federal officials believe are 'likely' noncitizens; a preliminary review of a sample by Los Angeles County election officials found many registrations were cancelled, inactive or had no voting history, and some pertained to people who indicated they were born in the US. The DOJ also announced charges on Monday against 28 green card holders across the state accused of illegally voting or registering to vote.