Noncitizen Voter Investigations: Judge Curbs DHS in 9 States

A federal judge in Oakland has barred Homeland Security agents from knocking on the doors of people they believe are U.S. citizens as part of the administration’s noncitizen voter investigations in nine states, through Election Day. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled Oct. 21 that the door-to-door campaign likely violates the Voting Rights Act’s ban on intimidating people who help others vote, and she built much of that conclusion on DHS’s own admissions about the data behind its target lists. The order reaches California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, but it is on hold until 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, which leaves the government two days to seek emergency relief.

The calendar gives the ruling its weight. With early voting under way, it decides whether federal agents can keep turning up at the homes of naturalized Americans in the campaign’s last two weeks. CBS News reported that Homeland Security Investigations agents had visited homes in at least six states asking about immigration status and voting history.

What the injunction stops, and what it leaves alone

The preliminary injunction in California Nurses Association v. Mullin, No. 26-cv-10680-AMO, is narrower than some headlines suggest.

Covered: elections-related field operations and field interviews in the nine states that involve people agents know or suspect are U.S. citizens, along with field operations based wholly on TECS records produced by DHS’s voter eligibility matching process.
Not covered: investigations of suspected noncitizen voters, records checks and prosecutions. “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,” the judge wrote, and the order leaves DHS free to pursue voter fraud “by lawful means.”
Duration: until polls close on Nov. 3, unless the court directs otherwise, conditioned on a $100 bond from the plaintiffs.

Only the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United cleared the standing bar, with declarations from at least four citizen members who said they had stopped attending election events. Voto Latino Foundation, San Francisco and Santa Clara County did not clearly show standing at this stage, and the court did not reach the Administrative Procedure Act claims. The case rests on one theory: intimidation of people who urge or help others to vote under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. 10307(b), which the court held gives private parties a right to sue. That narrow base is likely to be the government’s first target on appeal.

Why the target lists keep landing on naturalized citizens

The order describes an “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” put in place in August 2026, that directed USCIS staff to build lists of people to investigate. The source data included 48.2 million records DHS received “through independent sources” and 50.6 million records from the Justice Department, which DHS “enriches” through a system called iLab “using unknown artificial intelligence tools,” the court found. Staff were told to treat the data as presumptively valid and to complete at least 40 reviews, spending no more than 12 minutes on each person. “The initial target list data is voluminous and unreliable,” the judge wrote.

There is no federal database of U.S. residents’ citizenship, the court noted, and USCIS concedes errors will come from similar names, incomplete records and outdated citizenship information. The court also found DHS policy is to target naturalized citizens specifically when the data suggests they voted before naturalizing. Immigration files record status at a point in time, so a person who held a green card in 2018 and took the oath in 2022 can look like a noncitizen voter to a matching program that reads the older entry. That is the same weakness behind the U.S.-born voters Los Angeles County found in a sample of the federal noncitizen list and the privacy claims in the separate suit over DHS’s use of voter records from 47 states.

At the Oct. 19 hearing, a Justice Department lawyer argued that the data sharing and the deployment of agents are lawful investigative tactics and that any intimidation was “ancillary,” Courthouse News reported. The Justice Department says 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud offenses since the administration began, CBS News reported, a total that includes the 28 California green card holders charged Oct. 19. The injunction does not touch those prosecutions.

A two-day window before the order bites

The short stay all but invites an emergency motion to the Ninth Circuit. The government is likely to invoke the Purcell principle, under which federal courts hesitate to change election rules close to an election. Whether it fits is an open question, since this order restrains federal agents rather than state election procedures, and the judge found it unlikely that voters scared off by a home visit could ever be identified afterward.

If the order takes effect, DHS will have to sort citizens from noncitizens before it knocks rather than at the door. No one comes off a target list, and records checks continue. With Arlington County’s suit over armed agents at polling places also pending, the limits on federal agents this election may be set by several courts in the same final week.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

Author's website Author's posts