A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations into whether non-citizens are registered to vote in nine states.
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations into whether non-citizens are registered to vote in nine states.
The US District Court Judge in Oakland found that the government's effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it's leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts.
The judge said the probe should be halted until polls close on Election Day, November 3.
She put her ruling, which was made Wednesday, on hold until Friday to give the administration a chance to appeal.
The ruling applies to investigations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
It comes as the Trump administration has been hunting for noncitizen voters throughout the country in lead up to the midterm elections.
The administration has signaled that it's a major problem, when in fact it's quite rare, as even its own investigations have shown.
The lawsuit was filed by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, along with the Voto Latino Foundation, San Francisco and Santa Clara County.
In response to the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Thursday saying it's focused on "removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens.
According to legal filings in the case, investigators were told to target naturalized citizens to see whether they had voted before they became US citizens.
The Department of Justice has been demanding detailed and unredacted voter roll data from the states and has sued the 30 states that have refused to turn it over, losing each of those cases so far.
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