In September, armed and uniformed federal agents began knocking on doors in several states with a short list of questions: What is your immigration status? Did you register to vote? Did you cast a ballot? For some of the people who answered the door, the answer to the first question was simple. They were American citizens.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in California put limits on those visits. In a 19-page order filed at 4:51 p.m. Pacific time on October 21, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a preliminary injunction that restricts the Department of Homeland Security’s pre-election field operations in nine states, finding the government leaned on citizenship data that is prone to error and that the visits likely intimidate citizens who help others vote.
The case is California Nurses Association v. Mullin, named for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. It lands less than two weeks before the November 3 midterms and in the middle of the most aggressive federal push on noncitizen voting in modern memory. Here is what the order does, what it does not do, and why both sides think the stakes are high.
What the Judge Ordered
The court’s order bars DHS, and anyone acting in concert with it, from two things in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
First, officers may not conduct elections-related field operations and interviews that involve, or are likely to involve, people the government knows or should reasonably suspect are U.S. citizens. Second, officers may not run those operations against suspected citizens based wholly on records generated under what the government calls its Voter Eligibility Matching Policy, which compares voter information with immigration and citizenship records.
The judge paused her own order until 5 p.m. on Friday, October 23, which gave the government a short window to seek relief. Unless the court says otherwise, it stays in force until 8 p.m. on November 3 or until polls close on Election Day. The plaintiffs had to post a $100 bond by Thursday afternoon to keep the injunction alive.
The order is narrower than the lawsuit. Of the five plaintiffs, only the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United showed standing, and only on one claim. The judge found that San Francisco, Santa Clara County and the Voto Latino Foundation had not clearly shown standing at this stage. She also did not rule on the plaintiffs’ Administrative Procedure Act arguments or their constitutional claims. The injunction rests entirely on Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidating, threatening or coercing anyone for voting or for helping someone else vote. The court held that Section 11(b) allows private parties to sue, a point the government contested.
“Defendants have not shown that investigation of fraudulent voting requires the targeting of U.S. citizens,” the judge wrote.
How the Home Visits Worked
The operations were run by Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to a CBS News investigation, the visits ramped up in September as the midterm campaign heated up, and internal documents describe a “surge” in which hundreds of agents were pulled off their regular cases to track down alleged noncitizen voters.
The target lists came from data matching run through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Court records describe a starting pool of 48.2 million records from what the government called independent sources and 50.6 million records from the Justice Department, including commercial voter-roll data for some states. Reviewers were told to complete at least 40 suspected-subject reviews, spending no more than 12 minutes on each elimination, according to the order. A USCIS whistleblower described the same pressure and alleged the data was rushed and that the target list included U.S. citizens. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla released a report on those whistleblower claims in September.
The government does not claim the system is perfect. In a sworn declaration, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell acknowledged a “low possibility” that citizens could be wrongly flagged as potential noncitizens. He said his team manually reviews records and that the remaining risk is outweighed by the agency’s mission. USCIS itself concedes that errors can come from similar names, incomplete records, outdated citizenship data and clerical mistakes.
The judge was not persuaded that manual review solves the problem. “Even under the best conditions, there is a high likelihood of error in review,” she wrote. One built-in issue: there is no single federal database of who is a citizen. People who were born abroad and later naturalized, or who were born in the United States and never needed immigration paperwork, can look ambiguous to a matching program that leans on immigration files.
Naturalized citizens are a particular concern because DHS’s targets could include people who registered or voted before they became citizens. That is a real legal problem for those individuals. It also means a naturalized citizen who has voted lawfully for years can end up on a list with a federal agent at the door.
What the Nurses Told the Court
The plaintiffs’ case centered on fear. A California Nurses Association filing described naturalized members who stopped attending political rallies, stopped signing up as poll workers or stopped voting in person after hearing about the operations. The judge found that the combination of unreliable data and well-publicized arrests creates an “objectively reasonable” fear of getting tangled up with law enforcement, and that the fear discourages citizens from encouraging or helping others to vote.
Publicity mattered. Homeland Security Investigations posted on social media about its cases, including images of agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote. CBS reported the arrest of a 72-year-old man from Belize, taken from his home in his pajamas with dozens of agents present, who is charged with voting illegally in four elections.
Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, which is litigating the case alongside the National Immigration Law Center, argued that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often the lists were wrong and sent agents to homes weeks before an election, according to NPR.
The Government’s Case
The administration’s position deserves a full hearing, because the underlying goal is one most Americans share. Noncitizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections. Doing so is a federal crime, and every illegal ballot cancels out a lawful one.
In a statement, DHS said it is focused on identifying, prosecuting and removing noncitizens who vote and “dilute the votes of U.S. citizens,” and that it has “no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.” In court, the government argued that DHS reasonably used the best data available, even if imperfect, and that the intimidation allegations were too vague to support an injunction. The White House referred questions to DHS.
The government also points to results. The Justice Department says 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud offenses since the start of the Trump administration. On October 19, it announced charges against 28 green card holders in California, a case Stucci Media covered when it broke: DOJ Charges 28 Green Card Holders in California Voting Sweep. All 28 were on a list of about 20,000 names the department had handed to state officials, and many were accused of lying on naturalization applications about past voter registration or claims of citizenship. Nationally, DOJ says it has charged 113 noncitizens across 20 states in a seven-week span.
“This Department of Justice will not look the other way while noncitizens vote in federal elections,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said when announcing the California charges, as reported by NPR.
Supporters of the effort argue that states have been slow or unwilling to share full voter-roll data, leaving federal investigators to work with the tools they have. They also note the injunction does not stop prosecutions, does not stop DHS from investigating people it reasonably believes are noncitizens and only applies to nine states.
The Numbers Behind the Fight
The disagreement is ultimately about scale. DHS has alleged that up to 250,000 noncitizens may be illegally registered to vote nationwide. Election experts dispute that figure. There are roughly 227 million registered voters in the United States, and state reviews and audits have consistently found noncitizen voting to be extremely rare.
Specific claims have also run into trouble. In Nevada, DHS initially said nearly 16,000 noncitizens were on the state’s voter rolls. A Protect Democracy lawyer told CBS that DHS has not produced evidence of a single illegally registered voter there. In Los Angeles County, a preliminary review of a sample of names on the federal list found many registrations that were already canceled, inactive or had no voting history, and some belonged to people who said they were born in the United States.
California officials have pushed back hard on the separate DOJ demand to set aside ballots from about 20,000 voters the department calls “likely noncitizens.” Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the demand an “unprecedented suspension” of voting rights, and state and county officials cited the National Voter Registration Act, which restricts systematic voter removals in the 90 days before a federal election. Federal courts have repeatedly rejected the administration’s demands for full state voter data, as Stucci Media reported earlier this month in Judge Strikes Down DOJ Voter Rolls Policy.
Why It Matters
Two things can be true at once. Noncitizen voting is a crime that should be prosecuted when it happens, and a government program that sends armed agents to the homes of citizens based on shaky data can scare lawful voters away from the polls. This ruling is a test of where the line between those two sits.
For Stucci Media’s audience, the issue is personal. Thousands of service members have earned their citizenship through military service, and many veterans live in mixed-status or immigrant families. A naturalized Army veteran who finds a federal agent at the door asking whether she voted is exactly the kind of citizen the judge said should not be caught in the net. At the same time, veterans who swore an oath to defend the Constitution have every reason to want elections that only eligible citizens decide.
For working Americans, the practical stakes are trust. If voters believe noncitizens are casting ballots, they lose faith in results. If citizens believe voting or volunteering at the polls could put them on a federal list, some will stay home. Both outcomes erode the same thing. The best path is the one that targets actual lawbreakers with evidence that holds up, and this order pushes DHS toward that standard for the final 10 days of the campaign.
What Happens Next
The injunction is temporary. It expires when polls close on November 3, and the case on the merits continues afterward. The government can ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to stay or overturn the order, and DHS’s public statements after the ruling did not say whether it would. The broader fight over noncitizen voting, including DOJ’s lawsuit over California ballots and the pending prosecutions, is unaffected by this ruling.
Things to watch this week: whether DHS seeks emergency relief, whether similar suits are filed in states outside the nine covered here, and how the California ballot dispute is resolved before counting begins. For continuing coverage, follow Stucci Media’s immigration reporting.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did the judge rule about DHS noncitizen voter investigations?
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a preliminary injunction barring DHS from election-related field operations and interviews in nine states that involve people the agency knows or should reasonably suspect are U.S. citizens, and from running such operations against suspected citizens based only on its voter-matching records.
Which states are covered by the order?
California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Court filings indicated those were the states where officers were told to prioritize the investigations.
Does the ruling stop prosecutions of noncitizens who voted?
No. The order does not block criminal cases, and it does not stop DHS from investigating people it reasonably believes are noncitizens. It limits field operations aimed at likely citizens and the use of matching data alone to target them.
How long does the injunction last?
It took effect at 5 p.m. on October 23, 2026, and remains in place until 8 p.m. on November 3 or until polls close on Election Day, unless the court changes it or an appeals court intervenes.
Why did the judge say the operations were a problem?
She found the government relied on citizenship data with a high likelihood of error and that publicized arrests and home visits created an objectively reasonable fear that deters citizens from voting or helping others vote, which likely violates Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act.
Rocci J. Stucci is the founder and CEO of Stucci Media and host of The Rocci Stucci Show.
