Less than two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, a federal judge in California has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop key parts of its push to track down noncitizens registered to vote in nine states.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction late Wednesday that bars DHS from conducting elections-related field operations and field interviews in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin when those operations involve, or are likely to involve, people whom officials know or should reasonably suspect are U.S. citizens.
Who is the judge?
Martínez-Olguín was nominated to the federal bench by President Joe Biden in 2022. According to Fox News, she was born in Mexico and spent about six years at the American Civil Liberties Union before becoming a judge, working on women’s and immigrants’ rights issues.
What the ruling says
The case was brought by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, the City and County of San Francisco, Santa Clara County and the Voto Latino Foundation. The judge found the groups were likely to succeed in their claim that DHS’s methods ran afoul of a section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits intimidating, threatening or coercing people who help others vote or encourage them to vote.
The challenge targeted DHS’s “Surge” initiative. Under guidance issued on August 31, Homeland Security Investigations agents were directed to prioritize in-person field interviews about voter eligibility in the nine states, working from target lists built by matching government and commercial records. The judge pointed to what she called a “high likelihood of error” in how those lists were assembled, and to armed agents visiting homes to conduct interviews.
Notably, the judge did not rule that investigating illegal voting is itself unlawful. “Plaintiffs do not claim, nor does the Court find, that it is unlawful for federal officials to undertake investigations into unlawful voting in federal elections,” she wrote.
Government lawyers conceded that some American citizens may have been looked at during the investigations, but argued the in-person interviews were “expressly designed to resolve the discrepancies” in the records.
DHS fires back
The Department of Homeland Security made clear it isn’t backing down from its mission. “DHS is laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders,” a department spokesperson said. “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”
The Trump administration maintains that noncitizen voting in federal elections is a crime and that DHS has clear legal authority to investigate it. Cracking down on illegal voting has been a top priority of President Trump’s second term, though, as Fox News noted, the effort has yet to produce evidence of widespread noncitizen voting.
What happens next
The judge put her order on hold until 5 p.m. Friday, October 23, giving the administration time to appeal. If it takes effect, the injunction runs until polls close on Election Day, November 3, unless the court orders otherwise.
Several of the affected states are led by Democrats who have opposed the administration’s immigration enforcement, and some of them have high-profile races on the ballot in November. With early voting already underway across the country, all eyes now turn to whether the administration wins relief from a higher court before Friday’s deadline.