A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security's practice of sending agents to question residents about their citizenship and voting history likely violates the Voting Rights Act, ordering restrictions on election-related investigations in nine states ahead of the November midterms.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin barred federal immigration authorities from conducting election-related field operations or interviews likely to involve people they know, suspect or reasonably should suspect are U.S. citizens.
The order, which covers states including California and New York, is scheduled to remain in effect until polls close on Election Day, CBS News reports. The judge stayed its implementation until 5 p.m. Friday, allowing the government time to appeal.
The ruling followed an investigation from the same news site documenting armed Homeland Security Investigations agents visiting homes in multiple states to question residents about their immigration status, voter registration and participation in previous elections.
Martinez-Olguin said the government's methods likely violated protections against voter intimidation. She also cited a "high likelihood of error" in the databases used to identify potential targets.
The judge emphasized that investigating unlawful voting was not itself prohibited. The legal concern was whether federal authorities were intimidating U.S. citizens entitled to participate in elections.
CBS reported that hundreds of agents had been reassigned from other investigations to a voter-fraud initiative involving field reviews in at least six states, including California, Georgia and Pennsylvania. DHS defended the operation, saying it was investigating election fraud and protecting the voting rights of American citizens.
A separate investigation by The New Yorker published on Thursday found that immigration officials had been instructed to review 40 potential voters daily, spending approximately 12 minutes on each case.
The magazine also reported that Nevada officials examined 185 names provided by DHS as suspected noncitizen voters and determined that all were U.S. citizens. DHS said it subsequently identified approximately 2,000 additional noncitizens from the broader list.
According to the Justice Department, 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud-related offenses since the beginning of Trump's second administration. The judge's order came after unions and voting-rights advocates sued over the investigations, arguing that visits by armed federal agents could discourage eligible citizens from voting.
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