Trump admin accused of illegally collecting voter data from 47 states

The Trump administration is being sued over its efforts to collect and analyze sensitive voter data from across the country.

The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, alleges the Department of Homeland Security has obtained voter files from at least 47 states and handled the data in a way that violates federal law.

DHS’ secretive probe of the voter data, which includes a policy to combine it with commercial datasets, ignores federal safeguards and the privacy rights of millions of Americans, the lawsuit says.

The case was brought by the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the League of United Latin American Citizens and is the latest legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s efforts to combat noncitizen voting.

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The Trump administration is being sued over its efforts to collect and analyze sensitive voter data from across the country. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)

The president has purported repeatedly argued that noncitizen voting poses a serious threat to election integrity, although studies and prosecutions have found documented instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be rare.

The administration has repeatedly sought a greater federal role in voter eligibility and election administration, areas traditionally overseen primarily by states under the Constitution and federal law.

Federal courts have repeatedly rejected administration efforts to compel states to turn over voter information.

DHS’ secretive probe of the voter data, which includes a policy to combine it with commercial datasets, ignores federal safeguards and the privacy rights of millions of Americans, the lawsuit says. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images)

The new lawsuit alleges the administration has obtained and processed voter records from at least 47 states, even though officials in 30 states have previously refused federal demands to turn over voter information.

The complaint urges the court to declare the administration’s collection of voter data illegal, block DHS’ policy and order the agency to delete and stop using the voter information it has already obtained.

The lawsuit comes less than three weeks before Election Day, and the administration continues to pressure states, alleging they are not doing enough to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls.

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The president has repeatedly argued that noncitizen voting poses a serious threat to election integrity, although documented instances of noncitizens casting ballots are rare. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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The administration sued California election officials on Thursday, arguing they failed to act quickly enough to review names the federal government identified as “likely” noncitizens. The Justice Department asked a judge to block the state from counting mail-in ballots from those individuals unless their eligibility can be confirmed.

The California secretary of state’s office said it was given only 48 hours to review roughly 20,000 names and said the federal government had not provided the underlying evidence or methodology supporting its claims.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit, however, says U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a “multiagency and multilevel review” and determined with “high confidence” that roughly 20,000 people on California’s voter rolls were likely noncitizens.

DHS did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.