DHS says no plans to investigate people it believes are citizens

In a declaration to U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official Nicolas Bartell said his team manually reviews records before referring cases to Homeland Security Investigations. Bartell acknowledged the “low possibility” that citizens could be “erroneously identified as potential aliens” in federal records. He wrote that safeguards his office takes mitigated the risks and that “and any remaining risks were outweighed by the need to support the agency’s law-enforcement and election-integrity mission.”

DHS disputed the court’s concern about its targeting practices. The agency wrote: “DHS is laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. ONLY Americans should elect American leaders.” DHS added: “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

Those statements came as Martínez-Olguín issued a 19-page order late Wednesday in California putting limits on specified pre-election DHS field operations. DHS said the operations were aimed at finding noncitizens who had illegally voted. The judge, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote that the federal government was using “flawed” data and that the efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.

The order was set to take effect Friday and remain in effect through election night, though the federal government could appeal. It was unclear how much effect the order would have on the highly publicized campaign to find noncitizen voters.

In recent weeks, armed Homeland Security Investigations officers carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalized.

Martínez-Olguín referenced a disclosure last month from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services whistleblower that alleged rushed efforts to match data had created a target list of potential noncitizens on voter rolls and that the list included U.S. citizens. She also pointed to HSI’s social media posts, including one that showed agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote.

Martínez-Olguín wrote that the government’s use of unreliable and incomplete data along with highly publicized arrests “lead to an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote.”

HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents produced in the case and CNN reporting. Martínez-Olguín barred DHS officers in those states from conducting field operations targeting people they “know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens.” She also barred operations based “wholly” on USCIS matching data without further investigation.

NPR reported that state reviews and audits have consistently found voting by noncitizens to be extremely rare.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed last month by a coalition that includes San Francisco and Santa Clara counties, the city of San Francisco, nursing unions and the Voto Latino Foundation. Protect Democracy and the National Immigration Law Center are litigating the case against DHS and the Department of Justice.

Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, said: “Today, the courts affirmed a vital principle of our democracy: Voting is a fundamental right that citizens – whether born here or naturalized – should be able to exercise without armed government agents harassing them.” He added: “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.”

A court filing by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United described naturalized citizen members of those organizations who no longer wanted to attend political rallies, sign up as election poll workers or vote in person because of the federal operations.

The Department of Justice is also suing California and demanding that the state segregate 20,000 ballots from people federal officials say they believe are “likely” noncitizens. A preliminary review of a sample of that list by Los Angeles County election officials found many of the registrations were canceled, inactive or had no voting history, and some pertained to people who indicated they were born in the U.S.

The DOJ announced charges Monday against 28 green card holders across California, accusing them of illegally voting or registering to vote.