Trump admin files ‘long shot’ lawsuit after California wouldn’t open a thumb drive of alleged non-citizens

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The Trump administration made good on threats that it would sue California over unvetted non-citizen voter claims, with a lawsuit legal experts are describing as a “long shot” and “a press release masquerading as litigation.”

The new lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles seeks to block state election officials from counting the ballots of some 20,000 people the administration believes could be non-citizens.

It’s the latest effort by President Donald Trump – who has for years made unfounded claims of mass voter fraud – to inject his administration into how elections are run, a task the Constitution primarily assigns the states.

The Justice Department earlier this week dropped off a thumb-drive with people it believes could be noncitizens who registered to vote with the office of Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. The office, however, said that because of “established data privacy and information security protocols” it had not even accessed the device as of Wednesday. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, another defendant in the case, said on Wednesday that the DOJ never even provided her a list when it sent the Tuesday letter making the demand.

California – a state that sends mail ballots to all of its registered voters – began mailing ballots on October 5.

“To be sure, the United States actively investigates and prosecutes incidents of unlawful voting,” the Justice Department said in its lawsuit. “But it is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals that two federal investigative offices identified on the California voter roster as likely being sent vote-by-mail ballots.”

Notre Dame Law School Professor Derek Muller said the lawsuit, at best, is a “long shot.”

The Justice Department claims in its complaint that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause gives it the ability to go to court to challenge how California has allegedly stood in the way of the Trump administration’s ability to enforce the federal ban on non-citizens.

It’s true the Supremacy Clause says when federal law and state policy are at odds, the federal law prevails. But the issue in the new DOJ lawsuit, according to Muller, is that there is no federal law dictating how states should go about verifying the citizenship status of voters on their rolls.

“The federal complaint filed today is full of language about the supremacy clause and federal ‘preemption,’” University of California-Los Angeles law professor Rick Hasen, wrote on his Election Law Blog about DOJ’s new case. “But federal law does not preempt the state’s right to run its election and judge the qualifications of its voters.

Courts previously blocked executive orders Trump signed in 2025 and 2026 seeking to change certain election procedures. Judges have also tossed out two dozen lawsuits the Justice Department has brought against various states seeking sensitive voter registration data for administration audits.

The administration’s claim of 20,000 potential non-citizens on California voter rolls was derived from public voter registration information the federal government obtained, according to the lawsuit.

“The State knows that noncitizens might be registered to vote, and it knows the names of such individuals,” the lawsuit said. “But it still intends to count their vote without verifying the voter’s citizenship. California’s actions thus knowingly facilitate unlawful voting.”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount University law professor who worked on voting rights issues in past Democratic administrations, said, “This is as guaranteed a loss as anything the DOJ has filed yet.”

“It is real tough to know what the legal theory is,” Levitt added, calling the lawsuit a “press release masquerading as litigation.”

The lawsuit gives some insight into how the Trump administration has been coming up with its claims that tens of thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote it has made against states that have not voluntarily handed over its non-public voter data for the administration to review.

Offices within the Department of Homeland Security and the US Customs and Immigration Services have been comparing publicly accessible voter rolls with the agency’s internal immigration records.

“Voter rolls or information about voter rolls provided to USCIS typically do not contain complete information on an individual,” the lawsuit said. “So, after receiving a voter roll or information about voters on voter rolls, USCIS utilizes third-party software to identify high, medium, or low confidence matches between voter information and information about that individual compiled by the software program.”

In other states, the claims have shrunk significantly after further scrutiny.

For instance, in Nevada for instance, DHS claimed in July that it found that 15,903 non-citizens on its voter rolls, but a month later, clarified to state election officials that only 6,218 were high-confidence matches. The administration then provided the state with a subset of 185 alleged non-citizens it had come up with after “rigorous manual review process.”

Nevada claims that all 185 of those people appeared to be citizens, according to its records.

“There is no reason to believe that the data given to California is any better,” Hasen wrote. “The risk of disenfranchisement is very serious.”

Weber, in a letter to DOJ released Thursday, said that the information the administration has handed over “lacks both the detail and function to be of any investigative use.”

She said that her office “will welcome” the chance to review evidence of ineligible voters and take action “in compliance with federal and state law.”

“However, I will not disenfranchise thousands of Californians – or order any county elections official to do so – based solely upon an unsupported and likely inaccurate ‘belie(f)’ that certain voters are ‘likely” noncitizens,” she wrote.

CNN’s Gabe Cohen contributed to this report.

朱莉娅·德马雷·尼金森/美联社

特朗普政府兑现了此前的威胁，即就未经核实的非公民选民身份主张起诉加利福尼亚州。但法律专家称，这场诉讼“胜算渺茫”，而且“不过是一份伪装成诉讼的新闻稿”。

周四在洛杉矶提起的新诉讼旨在阻止州选举官员统计约 20,000 名选民的选票，政府认为这些人可能是非公民。

这是唐纳德·特朗普总统的最新举措——他多年来一直毫无根据地声称存在大规模选民欺诈——试图将他的政府引入选举运作方式，而这项任务主要由各州负责。

本周早些时候，司法部将一个U盘交给了洛杉矶县选民登记官迪恩·洛根办公室，U盘里存有他们认为可能是非公民的选民信息。然而，该办公室表示，由于“既定的数据隐私和信息安全协议”，截至周三，他们甚至还没有访问过该U盘。加州州务卿雪莉·韦伯是此案的另一名被告，她周三表示，司法部在周二发出要求提供名单的信函时，甚至没有向她提供任何名单。

加利福尼亚州向所有注册选民邮寄选票，该州于 10 月 5 日开始邮寄选票。

“诚然，美国会积极调查和起诉非法投票事件，”司法部在诉讼中表示。“但要在美国2026年大选结束前调查数千人，更不用说数万人了，对加州选民名册上两个联邦调查机构认定可能收到邮寄选票的人员进行调查，既不切实际也不可行。”

圣母大学法学院教授德里克·穆勒表示，这场诉讼充其量也只是“希望渺茫”。

司法部在其诉状中声称，宪法的最高条款赋予其向法院提起诉讼的权力，以挑战加利福尼亚州如何阻挠特朗普政府执行针对非公民的联邦禁令。

联邦最高条款的确规定，当联邦法律与州政策相冲突时，以联邦法律为准。但穆勒指出，司法部此次新诉讼的关键问题在于，目前尚无联邦法律规定各州应如何核实选民名册上的公民身份。

加州大学洛杉矶分校法学教授里克·哈森在他的选举法博客上就司法部的新案件写道：“今天提交的联邦诉状充斥着关于最高条款和联邦‘优先权’的措辞。但联邦法律并不凌驾于各州组织选举和评判选民资格的权利之上。”

此前，法院已阻止特朗普在2025年和2026年签署旨在改变某些选举程序的行政命令。此外，法官还驳回了司法部针对各州提起的二十多起诉讼，这些诉讼旨在获取敏感的选民登记数据以进行行政审计。

诉讼称，政府声称加州选民名册上有 2 万名潜在的非公民，这一说法来源于联邦政府获得的公开选民登记信息。

诉讼称：“加州政府明知可能有非公民登记投票，也知道这些人的姓名，却仍然打算在不核实其公民身份的情况下计票。加州的这种行为实际上是在明知故犯地助长非法投票。”

曾在民主党执政时期从事投票权问题的洛约拉马利蒙特大学法学教授贾斯汀·莱维特表示：“这和司法部迄今为止提起的任何诉讼一样，都是一场注定失败的败诉。”

“很难知道法律理论是什么，”莱维特补充道，并称该诉讼是“伪装成诉讼的新闻稿”。

该诉讼揭示了特朗普政府如何得出其关于数万名非公民登记投票的说法，这些说法针对的是那些没有自愿向政府提交非公开选民数据以供审查的州。

美国国土安全部和美国海关与移民局的各部门一直在将公开的选民名册与该机构的内部移民记录进行比对。

诉讼称：“美国公民及移民服务局（USCIS）收到的选民名册或有关选民名册的信息通常不包含个人的完整信息。因此，USCIS在收到选民名册或有关选民的信息后，会利用第三方软件来识别选民信息与该软件程序收集的有关该个人的信息之间的高、中或低置信度匹配情况。”

在其他州，经过进一步审查，这些索赔金额已大幅减少。

例如，在内华达州，国土安全部7月份声称在该州选民名册上发现了15903名非公民，但一个月后，国土安全部向州选举官员澄清，其中只有6218人与选民信息高度吻合。随后，国土安全部向该州提供了经过“严格的人工审查程序”后确定的185名疑似非公民名单。

内华达州声称，根据其记录，这 185 人似乎都是公民。

哈森写道：“没有理由相信提供给加州的数据会更好。剥夺选举权的风险非常严重。”

韦伯在周四公布的一封致司法部的信中表示，政府移交的信息“既缺乏细节，也缺乏功能，无法用于任何调查”。

她表示，她的办公室“将乐于”审查不合格选民的证据，并“按照联邦和州法律”采取行动。

“但是，我不会仅仅基于未经证实且可能不准确的‘信念’，即某些选民‘很可能’不是公民，就剥夺成千上万加州人的选举权，也不会命令任何县选举官员这样做，”她写道。

CNN的Gabe Cohen对本报道亦有贡献。