Immigrant rights group seeks to block use of federal databases it says could purge legal voters

An immigrant rights coalition has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent the Trump administration from utilizing federal databases that they claim are being utilized to target legally naturalized voters. The lawsuit was brought before the U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

The group alleges that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Justice Department are undermining fair elections by using unreliable federal databases to bolster claims of voter fraud. The coalition's executive director, Angelica Salas, stated at a press conference that the federal government is launching an "attack on the freedom to vote" and calling it voter intimidation.

This lawsuit is part of an array of legal actions taken by states like California to counter federal measures that could cause confusion during the midterm elections. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights claims that the administration may be comparing voter rolls with undisclosed government databases, which can contain outdated and erroneous information, leading to inaccurate results that disproportionately affect naturalized voters.

The lawsuit maintains that Congress has never sanctioned such actions and has in fact prohibited invasion of voter privacy through government data matches in this manner. The Trump administration has been targeting noncitizen voting in an effort to allege potential fraud during the midterm elections, despite the rarity of such occurrences, and is pushing for the U.S. Postal Service to only send mail ballots to verified U.S. citizens.

The administration's Department of Justice has also sued to obtain detailed voter data in 30 states and the District of Columbia, although it has not yet succeeded.