The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Chief Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to share its noncitizen voter list. Carol M. Highsmith photo for the U.S. General Services Administration (public domain).
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to hand its noncitizen voter list of about 20,000 Californians to an immigrant rights group, so the group can check whether any of its members were wrongly flagged. Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled from the bench on Oct. 30 and set a 5 p.m. deadline that day, Bloomberg Law and the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The order is narrow, but it puts the list in front of people who say they may be on it. With the Nov. 3 election three days away, the government’s claims about who is and is not on that list are now open to a limited outside check.
The case, Trujillo v. DHS (No. 1:26-cv-03072), was brought by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) and a California voter. It is separate from the Democratic Party lawsuit Boasberg is also hearing over Justice Department letters to the states, and from the San Francisco challenge to the USCIS Unlawful Voter Initiative.
What the noncitizen voter list order allows, and what it does not
The list goes to CHIRLA’s legal team, not the public. Plaintiffs may not spread it beyond that team or share personal details from it, but they may say whether their members appear on it, according to the two outlets. The Chronicle reported that CHIRLA could then narrow or change the relief it seeks once it has reviewed the names. The individual voter who joined the suit turned out not to be on the list, the Chronicle reported.
Justice Department lawyer Ty Trejo gave the court a clear claim to test. “If they have a passport, are naturalized, they are not on the list,” he said, according to Bloomberg Law. He also acknowledged, the Chronicle reported, that some people on the list share names and birthdays or live on the same street, and he called the plaintiffs’ criticism “pure speculation and fearmongering.” Chad Dunn of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, who represents the plaintiffs, told the court the lists are “so haphazardly prepared that every voter in California is at risk.”
Trejo’s statement matters because naturalized citizens are the group most exposed to a false match. Their immigration files show years as noncitizens, and those records can lag behind the oath ceremony. If CHIRLA finds naturalized members on the list, the government’s description of it will be in doubt; if it finds none, the department’s position gets stronger. Neither outlet reported whether the department turned the list over by the deadline.
The government’s numbers have moved a long way, which is why the judge pressed on accuracy.
| State | First federal figure | Later figure |
|---|---|---|
| California | About 190,000 flagged (summer 2026) | About 20,000 named (Oct. 13, 2026) |
| Nevada | Nearly 16,000 | 185, then zero |
California has already run its own check. It reviewed 200 registrations from the federal list and found nearly 40 percent appeared to belong to U.S.-born citizens, Reuters reported on Oct. 28. Prosecutions, by contrast, run in the dozens: the Justice Department’s Oct. 26 announcement listed 48 people charged in five states, 47 of them green card holders.
So the Justice Department is saying that none of the people on the list it presented are U.S. citizens, while California is saying it identified some names on that list as belonging to U.S. citizens. If both sides are telling the truth, then the only conclusion could be that the 40 percent California identified as citizens are actually noncitizens who registered to vote by claiming to be citizens. The other possibility is that the Justice Department’s list is outdated and does not account for people who recently naturalized or who derived citizenship automatically through their parents and never applied for a U.S. passport.
Why green card holders and new citizens are watching
For a green card holder, the stakes are far higher than a rejected ballot. Voting in violation of law is a ground of deportation and of inadmissibility under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and a false claim of citizenship can bar a later green card or citizenship application. A wrong flag that leads to a referral could surface years later at a naturalization interview. Courts have so far kept California from setting those ballots aside: a federal judge refused the department’s request on Oct. 28, and a divided Ninth Circuit panel turned it away again.
The order is unlikely to be the last word. Trejo told the court the government “reserved the right to update the lists,” Bloomberg Law reported, so any review CHIRLA does is of a list that can change. The department can also seek appellate review. The larger fight comes after the polls close, over whether these names feed ballot challenges, investigations or immigration cases. The CHIRLA review is an early test of how many of them hold up.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Bloomberg Law, “DOJ Ordered to Provide List of 20,000 Alleged Noncitizen Voters” (Oct. 30, 2026)
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Judge orders DOJ to hand over list of 20K alleged noncitizen voters to immigrant rights group” (Oct. 30, 2026)
- Complaint, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates v. DHS, No. 3:26-cv-12617 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 28, 2026)
- Reuters, “Lawsuit seeks to block Trump administration effort to find noncitizen voters” (Oct. 28, 2026)
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