By admin 
The same data that the Trump administration is using to demand that California set aside the ballots of 20,000 people registered to vote in next month’s election is being used to target people in their homes, lawyers for voting rights groups plan to tell a federal judge on Monday.
Read more Feds charge 28 California noncitizens with voter fraud ahead of midterm elections
The data, which the groups say is highly flawed, is at the center of a lawsuit filed against the federal government by the Protect Democracy Project, the cities of San Francisco and Santa Clara and other groups. The groups allege that the Department of Homeland Security is sending armed agents to the homes of people it believes may be non-citizens who are registered to vote.
Lawyers for the groups are scheduled to ask U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín to issue a preliminary injunction barring the government from using the list to target individuals at a hearing in federal court in Oakland on Monday.
“DHS is now deploying armed and often militarized agents to homes to interrogate residents about whether they are eligible to vote,” the cities and voting rights groups said in their complaint, filed last month.
But it is “a near-certainty,” the groups said, that such activity violates laws against voter intimidation, because the data is likely to include numerous false-positives, incorrectly classifying many naturalized citizens or those who became citizens through pathways for children.
‘Make people afraid’
The purpose, the groups allege, is to frighten voters and keep them away from the polls.
“They’re taking content that they’re generating from these operations and engaging in a nationwide propaganda campaign to make people afraid,” said Beau Tremitiere, the lead attorney on the case.
Social media posts from the investigations branch of the Department of Homeland Security, brag about arresting “illegal alien voters,” court documents included with the group’s motion for a preliminary injunction show.
Read more DOJ says California cases prove widespread noncitizen voting. Experts disagree
In one Instagram post, an armed agent approaches a home, while the text reads, “HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) in Northern California will investigate any allegations of non-citizen voting and is committed to ensuring the enforcement of federal election law.”
Another, on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, relates that the agency conducted a voter registration fraud operation in California in August “and arrested targeted fraudsters.”
List of 300,000
Such activity is highly unusual for the federal government, which generally avoids any overt criminal investigation activity relating to potential voter fraud during the period shortly before and during elections, to avoid a chilling effect on participation, Tremitiere said.
In a brief filed late Friday with the court, Tremitiere said that the government had put together a list of 300,000 people that included many U.S. citizens, and planned to send hundreds of investigators into the field to interrogate them.
The data used to generate the list was also used in a lawsuit filed Thursday by the Trump administration against the state of California, the brief said. The action was filed after officials refused to comply with a letter demanding that the state set aside the ballots issued to some 20,000 people, whom it said might not be citizens.
“The state refused to independently verify the citizenship of the people included on the list,” the Justice Department said in its complaint. “Nor would they agree to work with the federal government to verify citizenship status before tabulating those voters’ votes.”
Read more Feds target alleged noncitizen voters with ‘flawed’ data, groups tell judge in CA
This story was originally published October 19, 2026 at 5:00 AM.