特朗普政府在加州拒绝移交疑似非公民名单U盘后提起“胜算渺茫”的诉讼

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

2026-10-15T21:20:12.279Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/15/politics/trump-doj-sues-california-non-citizens-voting

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.

“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.”

CNN’s Gabe Cohen contributed to this report.