A federal judge in San Francisco has blocked parts of a Department of Homeland Security campaign to question suspected noncitizen voters, finding it likely violates the Voting Rights Act by intimidating people who help others vote.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a preliminary injunction Wednesday to the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. It covers California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.
The court’s description of DHS’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative” is blunt. Agents work from target lists built from tens of millions of voter and commercial records, and the judge called the data “voluminous and unreliable.” DHS also runs the data through “unknown artificial intelligence tools.” During a “Surge,” agents had to complete at least 40 reviews and take “no more than twelve minutes” to clear each person. The judge found “a high likelihood of error,” and noted DHS’s own admission that errors will occur.
She also faulted DHS’s publicity, including social media posts showing armed agents at homes and arrests. Taken together with the flawed data, she wrote, this creates “objectively reasonable fear” among people urging others to vote. Some members have stopped attending election events.
The government argued its investigative authority trumps the Voting Rights Act. The judge rejected that.
“Declaring that an action is completed pursuant to legal authority does not make the act necessarily lawful,” she wrote.
The order is narrow. It bars field operations and interviews likely to involve people agents know or suspect are U.S. citizens, and operations based wholly on the flagged records against such people. The judge said it’s not unlawful to investigate illegal voting and made no findings on how much fraud exists. Voto Latino and San Francisco and Santa Clara counties lost on standing.
The order lasts through poll closing on November 3, but is stayed until 5 p.m. Friday to give the administration time to appeal.
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