Judge curbs Trump administration’s hunt for noncitizen voters in some states, citing flawed data
By Holmes Lybrand, Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop certain investigative actions in its hunt for noncitizen voters, writing that the department’s efforts rely on faulty data that includes US citizens legally allowed to vote.
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín wrote in the order that DHS’s data alleging hundreds of thousands of possible illegal voters “is widely known to inadvertently include U.S. citizens” and “leaves citizens afraid that their name will be wrongly included in the hundreds of thousands identified for investigation.”
The judge’s order specifically limits actions DHS takes in the field to investigate noncitizen voting, such as interviews, and says that DHS cannot take those actions if it believes the person they’re targeting could be a US citizen.
The order — which covers California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, however, does not take effect until Friday afternoon, giving the Trump administration time to appeal. Once it goes into effect, it is set to last until after the midterm elections.
DHS has been a driving force behind the administration’s efforts to bolster President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, aggressively expanding its efforts to investigate the issue. The new ruling, though limited in scope, marks a notable pushback to the agency’s approach.
CNN has reached out to DHS for comment.
“This order is a serious protection: the current policy targets known naturalized citizens,” Beau Tremitiere, an attorney for Protect Democracy, a legal organization that represents the groups that brought the case, told CNN. “Those operations are prohibited. And this order should otherwise force DHS to stop presuming many others are viable targets when there are indicia of citizenship.”
Martínez-Olguín wrote in her order that “at issue here is the reliance on admittedly flawed and incomplete data to create a list of individuals for HSI to interview in the months leading up to an election.”
The lawsuit against the government was brought by voting rights and advocacy groups who argued that DHS’s actions have already resulted in US citizens being afraid to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, as they may be included in the sweeping, faulty lists DHS has created.
“The public’s interest in safe elections, free from interference or intimidation, far exceed Defendants’ purported interest in combating unlawful voting by non-U.S. citizens,” the judge wrote Wednesday.
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