Judge Blocks DHS Voter-Fraud Field Interviews of Likely Citizens in Nine States Through Election Day
A federal judge in California on Wednesday barred the Department of Homeland Security from conducting voter-fraud field interviews of people who are likely U.S. citizens in nine states until the polls close on Nov. 3.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín’s preliminary injunction covers California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, the states DHS singled out for its election-season “surge.”
The order bars “elections-related field operations and field interviews” that involve, or are likely to involve, people agents “know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens.”
It also blocks field operations against such people that are based wholly on records generated by DHS’s voter eligibility matching process. The judge wrote that limiting those policies “does not prevent defendants from exercising their authority to investigate voter fraud by lawful means.”
The judge put her ruling on hold until 5 p.m. Friday, a delay the San Francisco Chronicle said was presumably meant to give the government time to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs must post a $100 bond by 5 p.m. Thursday.
The suit was brought by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, joined by the Voto Latino Foundation, Santa Clara County and San Francisco, Courthouse News Service reported.
Martínez-Olguín, a Biden appointee, found the plaintiffs are likely to show the operation violates the Voting Rights Act’s ban on intimidating people who urge or help others to vote.
“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,” she wrote, according to The Hill.
She called the target lists “voluminous and unreliable,” noting “there is no federal database containing citizenship status of U.S. residents,” and wrote that agents were given “no more than twelve minutes” to clear a person using commercial databases.
According to the order, the effort traces to an Aug. 31 DHS “Surge Initiative Guidance” directing Homeland Security Investigations agents to prioritize field interviews about voter eligibility in the nine states.
Justice Department attorney Kelsey Helland argued at a hearing that the data-sharing and agent deployments are lawful investigative tactics, and that the plaintiffs had no evidence of specific citizens being questioned.
Any intimidation, Helland said, would at most be “ancillary intimidation that rises out of that. It is a minor aspect of lawfully investigative actions,” Courthouse News reported.
The Justice Department said Monday that it had arrested 28 people suspected of registering or voting in California elections before becoming naturalized citizens, according to the outlet.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Geoffrey Curfman of Protect Democracy argued the government had touted investigating some 300,000 people for voting-related misconduct while prosecuting about 130.
“This order is a serious protection: the current policy targets known naturalized citizens,” Protect Democracy attorney Beau Tremitiere told CNN.
DHS did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. Other challenges to the administration’s election-enforcement efforts remain pending, including a separate lawsuit by national Democratic leaders.
Content created by Conservative Daily News and some content syndicated through CDN is available for re-publication without charge under the Creative Commons license. Visit our syndication page for details and requirements.
