Judge curtails DHS crackdown on ‘unlawful voters’ during midterm elections

The so-called Unlawful Voter Initiative and its sweep focused on nine states amounted to intimidation of union members who urge people to exercise their right to vote, the judge said.(CN) — A federal judge in Oakland, California, stopped the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday from carrying out its crackdown in nine states on purportedly unlawful voters based on flawed and incomplete data that sweeps in U.S. citizens.U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguín issued a preliminary injunction that, until the polls close on Nov. 3, prohibits federal agents from conducting elections-related field operations and field interviews in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin that involve or are likely to involve persons whom they know, suspect or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens.The Joe Biden appointee stayed the injunction — requested by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United — until 5 p.m. on Friday.“The Unlawful Voter Initiative is part of the federal administration’s effort to combat voter fraud,” Martinez-Olguín wrote. “Limiting the surge’s policies that sweep in U.S. citizens for investigation, and result in the intimidation of CNA/NNU from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote during the final weeks leading up to the midterm elections does not prevent defendants from exercising their authority to investigate voter fraud by lawful means.”Representatives of the Justice Department and an attorney for the nurses’ union didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.The unions, together with the Voto Latino Foundation, Santa Clara County and the city and county of San Francisco sued the federal government last month, claiming Homeland Security is targeting nine states with databases identifying individuals who may be voting illegally.The investigations, plaintiffs’ attorney Geoffrey Curfman with the Protect Democracy Project said at a hearing earlier this week, are causing “a credible fear” among citizens. The Homeland Security policies include a surge “sending armed federal agents to Americans’ homes or threatening their presence around polling locations to question voter eligibility ahead of the 2026 midterm elections,” he said.While there may have been few in-person interrogations of citizens and prosecutions of noncitizens, Curfman argued federal agencies have boasted about the number of people they investigated through their databases — the first step in a process that could lead to more interrogations.Under the Voting Rights Act, intimidation can occur if a citizen is forced to change their voting plans and doesn’t necessarily have to rise to the level of preventing a citizen from voting, he said.Additionally, Curfman argued federal agencies advertised they were looking into 300,000 individuals for voting-related misconduct and ended up prosecuting 130 individuals. In California, the feds claimed 190,000 people have “engaged in unlawful voting activity,” then lowered the number to 20,000, but their investigations led to just a single indictment, he noted.On Monday, the Department of Justice released a statement that it arrested 28 people suspected of registering to vote or voting in California elections before becoming naturalized citizens.Justice Department attorney Kelsey Helland argued at the hearing that sharing data between U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as deploying agents to the nine states, are investigative tactics in ongoing efforts to stop unlawful voting activity that began last year.Helland told the judge that the plaintiffs did not have evidence of specific U.S. citizens who were interrogated as a part of the investigations and that any purported intimidation would at most be “ancillary intimidation that rises out of that. It is a minor aspect of lawfully investigative actions.”Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads