By admin 
The Trump administration’s hunt for noncitizens illegally registered to vote is interfering in state elections and depriving naturalized citizens of their rights, a coalition of civil rights groups said in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
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The complaint, filed in federal court in San Francisco by Common Cause and the group OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, is the latest of several lawsuits involving the administration’s use of a list it says includes the names of 20,000 people who may be illegally registered to vote.
The list, derived from a commercially purchased version of California’s voter registration rolls and admitted by the government to not be fully accurate, is at the heart of an effort by the federal government to force the state to set aside ballots cast by anyone on the list until their citizenship status can be verified.
Last week, every county in California received a letter from the administration demanding cooperation, and federal officials have said multiple times that local election administrators could be prosecuted if they knowingly process ballots from noncitizens.
The list was also used in recent days to charge 28 people with misdemeanor voting registration violations as well as felony immigration charges. Last week, a federal judge in Oakland called the list “flawed” in a separate case, and ordered the government to stop sending armed agents to the homes of individuals named in the database until after next Tuesday’s election.
In the new lawsuit filed Wednesday, the rights groups said the list puts at risk naturalized citizens and their children, who gain full rights once their parents do under a process known as derivative citizenship.
The program, dubbed the Unlawful Voter Initiative, uses a “rushed, flawed process that brands naturalized and derivative citizens as potential criminals in the federal government’s eyes and then tries to disenfranchise them,” the groups said in their complaint.
Using the dataset to pressure California into setting aside votes is also illegal because it interferes with the ability of states to set and manage their own elections, the lawsuit says.
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The lawsuit questioned the involvement of the federal agency that developed the list, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, saying it is not typically involved in the enforcement of election laws.
“USCIS—an agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States—has no legitimate interest in purported voter fraud,” the groups said in their complaint. “But its actions … have real, lasting effects on American citizens.”
The lawsuit, which names as defendants the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Markwayne Mullin, seeks a court order barring the administration from conducting further investigations based on the list or as part of its Unlawful Voter Initiative. It also asks the court to halt the government’s efforts to force California or other states to set aside ballots from people named in the database.
The Justice Department would not comment on pending litigation, spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said.
But she pointed out that it is illegal for people who are not citizens to register to vote.
“Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and the department has a duty to enforce it,” Pels said.
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