Federal judge bars Homeland Security election-related field operations in nine states

A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction stopping the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out election-related field operations in nine states until polls close on Election Day, according to the Minnesota Reformer and other States Newsroom outlets.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, ruled Wednesday night. The order covers California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, the Ohio Capital Journal reported.

The case was brought by San Francisco, Santa Clara, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation. The plaintiffs alleged that the department was dispatching armed agents to people's homes to ask residents about their voting status.

The judge put her order on hold until Friday, which would allow time for the administration to seek an appeal, the outlets reported. She concluded that the public's interest in voting without intimidation outweighed the government's interest in pursuing noncitizen voting. In her ruling, she wrote that the evidence supports an "objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote." She also found that intimidation reported by nurses' union members, and its effect on their voter outreach work, amounted to irreparable harm.

According to the Daily Montanan, an internal Homeland Security Investigations memo dated Aug. 31 and filed in court outlined a "surge initiative" starting Sept. 1 that included field interviews. The memo named California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin as September targets, with other locations redacted.

In a Thursday statement, the department said it does not plan to question or investigate people it believes are U.S. citizens, the Oklahoma Voice reported. In an earlier court filing, Justice Department lawyers representing the department argued that the federal government has authority to investigate possible voting by noncitizens and that blocking such investigations would harm the public interest.

Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, which represented the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling. "Voting is a fundamental right that citizens – whether born here or naturalized – should be able to exercise without armed government agents harassing them," he said in a statement reported by the outlets.

The ruling comes as the Trump administration presses efforts against noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. The Justice Department is suing California in an effort to keep election officials from counting the ballots of roughly 20,000 voters the federal government says it suspects are not citizens, the outlets reported. President Donald Trump has long warned about noncitizen voting, which the outlets noted studies have found to be rare.

Separately, Democratic groups and senior Democrats in Congress filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop what they describe as intimidation of election officials by Trump, according to the reports.

Compiled by True News from reporting by Minnesota Reformer, Ohio Capital Journal, Oklahoma Voice and Daily Montanan. Each outlet's original story is linked below.

Originally published by True News: https://truenews.bagleyenterprises.net/stories/356