Judge Rules Against DHS Policy of Knocking on Doors to Track Down Possible Noncitizen Voters

Federal judge curbs DHS door-to-door hunt for noncitizen voters

Federal judge curbs DHS door-to-door hunt for noncitizen voters

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín late Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction finding that the Department of Homeland Security's practice of knocking on doors and asking residents about immigration status and recent voting likely violates the Voting Rights Act. The order covers nine states and runs through the close of polls on Election Day, November 3.

What the order limits

The judge barred federal immigration authorities from conducting "elections-related field operations and field interviews" in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin when the operations are likely to involve people officials "know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens." She stopped short of halting investigations into unlawful voting itself; the bar targets intimidating eligible voters.

Why: data the court called flawed

Martínez-Olguín wrote 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." She found the public interest in elections free of intimidation "far exceed[s] Defendants' purported interest in combating unlawful voting by non-U.S. citizens." The government's targeting method mixes commercial data with information from multiple agencies, carrying a significant risk of error.

Timeline and states

The order took effect late Wednesday but enforcement is paused until 5 p.m. Friday, October 23, presumably to let the Trump administration appeal. If it stands, it lasts until polls close November 3. Plaintiffs include labor unions, the Voto Latino Foundation, Santa Clara County and the city and county of San Francisco, who sued last month alleging DHS used databases to target potential illegal voters in nine states.

DHS response and the numbers fight

DHS's answer: "There is no quota on criminality. DHS will pursue each and every illegal voter to the fullest extent of the law." The federal government has asserted up to 250,000 noncitizens may be registered nationwide, a figure state officials dispute. In California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan refused a Justice Department demand to verify citizenship for roughly 20,000 listed individuals within 48 hours and sequester their mail-in ballots, citing severe unreliability in federal rolls. The Justice Department reports only 156 individuals have faced voting-fraud charges since the start of the current administration.

Reaction and fallout

Protect Democracy counsel Beau Tremitiere said "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." Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute advised anyone visited by a federal agent to say nothing beyond requesting a lawyer, not open the door without a judge-signed warrant, and remember that a materially false statement to a federal agent is a felony. A CBS News investigation found HSI agents, some armed, knocking on doors with captions like "AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE FOR AMERICANS." Martínez-Olguín, a Biden appointee, has served on the Northern District of California since March 2023.