Judge curbs Trump administration’s hunt for non-citizen voters in some states, citing flawed data

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop some investigative actions in its hunt for non-citizen voters, writing that the department’s efforts are based on flawed data that includes U.S. citizens legally eligible to vote.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín wrote in the order that DHS data reporting hundreds of thousands of potential illegal voters “is widely known to inadvertently include U.S. citizens” and “causes citizens to fear that their names will be wrongly included among the hundreds of thousands identified for investigation.”

The judge’s order specifically limits actions DHS takes on the ground to investigate non-citizen voting, such as interviews, and says DHS cannot take those actions if it believes the targeted person might be a U.S. citizen.

The order – which covers California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin – does not take effect until Friday afternoon, giving the Trump administration time to appeal. Once it takes effect, it is expected to last until after the midterm elections.

DHS has taken a leading role in the administration’s efforts to bolster President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens, aggressively expanding its efforts to investigate the matter. The new decision, although limited in scope, marks a notable step back from the agency’s approach.

CNN has contacted DHS for comment.

“This order constitutes a serious protection: the current policy targets known naturalized citizens,” Beau Tremitière, an attorney with Protect Democracy, a legal organization that represents the groups that brought the case, told CNN. “These operations are prohibited. And this order should otherwise force DHS to stop presuming that many others are viable targets when there are indications of citizenship.”

Martínez-Olguín wrote in his order that “the issue here is the use of admittedly flawed and incomplete data to create a list of people for HSI to interview in the months leading up to an election.”

The lawsuit against the government was brought by voting rights groups who argued that DHS’s actions have already made U.S. citizens afraid to vote in the upcoming midterm elections because they could be included in the flawed and erroneous lists created by DHS.

“The public’s interest in secure elections, free from interference or intimidation, far outweighs defendants’ purported interest in combating illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens,” the judge wrote Wednesday.