A federal judge has barred the Department of Homeland Security from sending armed agents to question people at their homes about whether they voted, ruling late Wednesday that the agency’s hunt for noncitizen voters likely violates the Voting Rights Act.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín found that DHS built its target lists from “voluminous and unreliable” data, including 48.2 million records from independent sources of questionable provenance, and that the operation threatened to frighten eligible voters out of the midterms. Her preliminary injunction stops elections-related field operations and interviews in nine states, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, wherever agents know or should suspect their targets are U.S. citizens.
The case was brought by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, which argued the door-knocking campaign chilled participation in the election. The judge stayed her order until Friday afternoon so the Trump administration can appeal, CNN reported, and once in force it will run through election day, Nov. 3.
DHS has run the campaign since late August, directing hundreds of immigration agents to pause their normal duties and search for evidence of noncitizen voting, according to whistleblower reports. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare in U.S. elections.
Source: CNN
