Judge curbs Trump administration’s hunt for noncitizen voters in some states, citing flawed data

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop certain investigative actions in its hunt for noncitizen voters, writing that the department’s efforts rely on faulty data that includes US citizens legally allowed to vote. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín wrote in the order that DHS’s data alleging hundreds of thousands of possible illegal voters “is widely known to inadvertently include U.S. citizens” and “leaves citizens afraid that their name will be wrongly included in the hundreds of thousands identified for investigation.” The judge’s order specifically limits actions DHS takes in the field to investigate noncitizen voting, such as interviews, and says that DHS cannot take those actions if it believes the person they’re targeting could be a US citizen.