Judge Limits DHS Door-Knocking on Suspected Noncitizen Voters as Campbell Joins Fight Over California Ballots

A federal judge in California has barred the Department of Homeland Security from conducting pre-election field operations in nine states that target people officers know or should suspect are U.S. citizens, finding that the agency's effort to find noncitizen voters relied on "flawed" data and likely violated the Voting Rights Act, NPR reported.

In a 19-page order late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the government's use of unreliable and incomplete data, along with highly publicized arrests, would "lead to an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote," according to NPR.

Armed Homeland Security Investigations officers have in recent weeks carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens, NPR reported. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalized. Operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents in the case and CNN reporting cited by NPR.

The order bars DHS officers in those states from field operations targeting people they "know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens," or that are based "wholly" on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services matching data without further investigation, NPR reported. It takes effect Friday and runs through election night, though the government could appeal.

The judge cited a disclosure last month by a USCIS whistleblower who alleged rushed efforts to match data to create a target list of potential noncitizens on voter rolls, and alleged that the list includes U.S. citizens, according to NPR. She also pointed to HSI social media posts, including one showing agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote.

In a declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell told the court his team manually reviews records before referring them to HSI, but acknowledged a "low possibility" that citizens could be "erroneously identified as potential aliens," NPR reported. DHS said in a statement that it is "laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote," and added, "We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens." State reviews and audits have consistently found voting by noncitizens to be extremely rare, NPR noted.

The lawsuit was brought by a coalition that includes San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, the city of San Francisco, nursing unions and the Voto Latino Foundation, represented by Protect Democracy and the National Immigration Law Center. "It was clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people's homes weeks before an election," said Beau Tremitiere, a Protect Democracy lawyer, according to NPR. A filing by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United described naturalized members who no longer wanted to attend rallies, serve as poll workers or vote in person because of the operations.

The ruling comes amid a related fight over ballots in California. The Justice Department sued the state on Oct. 15, asking a federal judge to order California to set aside more than 20,000 vote-by-mail ballots from people federal agencies identified as "likely" noncitizens until their citizenship is verified, This Week in Worcester reported. The department said Homeland Security Investigations flagged the names by analyzing public voter registration records and that California declined to set the ballots aside. On Oct. 19, the department charged 28 foreign nationals in California with election crimes and said each appears on the list.

A preliminary review of a sample of the list by Los Angeles County election officials found many registrations were canceled, inactive or had no voting history, and some belonged to people who indicated they were born in the United States, NPR reported.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and 21 other attorneys general filed an amicus brief supporting California, her office announced Thursday. "All eligible voters should be able to cast a ballot freely, safely, and without intimidation or interference," Campbell said. The brief argues that the Constitution assigns election administration to the states under rules Congress sets and that a federal win could throw election offices nationwide into chaos. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter took over the California case on Oct. 21, according to This Week in Worcester.

Massachusetts has its own dispute with the Justice Department over voter data. The department sued Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin in December 2025 to obtain the state's unredacted voter list; U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin dismissed the case in April, and the department appealed to the 1st Circuit in June, This Week in Worcester reported.