A Former ACLU Lawyer Just Blocked DHS Voter Fraud Sweeps in Nine States Before the Midterms

The Justice Department already charged sixteen people with illegal noncitizen voting in September.

Now a single federal judge just stopped DHS from finding any more of them in nine states.

A former ACLU attorney turned federal judge just gave Democrat strongholds a shield before Election Day.

An ACLU Advocate Who Sued DHS Is Now the One Ruling On It

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, born in Mexico, worked at the ACLU for nearly six years, the kind of advocacy background built on challenging this exact style of federal enforcement, before Joe Biden put her on the federal bench in 2022.

The advocate did not retire when she put on the robe.

She just traded a client list for a docket.

On Wednesday, she signed a preliminary injunction barring DHS, ICE, USCIS, and Homeland Security Investigations from conducting election-related field interviews and investigations in nine states whenever the target might be a U.S. citizen.

California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin are all covered.

The order runs until the polls close on November 3.

Martínez-Olguín wrote that the public's "interests in safe elections, free from interference or intimidation, far exceed" the government's interest in rooting out illegal noncitizen voting.

The case, California Nurses Association v. Mullin, was brought by San Francisco, Santa Clara County, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United, and the Voto Latino Foundation.

DHS Says It Only Wants the People Who Should Not Be Voting

DHS has been blunt about who it is actually after.

A DHS spokesperson said the department is "laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens."

"We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens," the spokesperson added.

"Only Americans should elect American leaders."

The judge still sided with the activist groups, ruling that armed agents showing up for in-person interviews could intimidate legitimate voters under the Voting Rights Act, even while admitting DHS's underlying mission of rooting out noncitizen voting is not itself unlawful.

New Jersey alone mistakenly placed more than 6,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls earlier this year, a fact the ruling does not erase.

The Justice Department has already filed more election-related charges in October on top of the 16 announced in September.

This Is the Same Playbook That Already Blocked ICE At the Courthouse Doors

A Biden-appointed judge already blocked ICE from making arrests at immigration courthouses earlier this year, and now a different Biden appointee just blocked DHS from looking for illegal voters in nine states, both times with Election Day on the calendar.

That is not a coincidence, that is a pattern, and every piece of it runs through the same handful of friendly courtrooms Democrats know they can count on.

Plaintiffs do not file election cases in the Northern District of California by accident, and they did not draw this judge by luck either.

Nine Democrat-run states just became a lot safer for anyone who should not be anywhere near a ballot box.

DHS still gets to appeal, and the clock on that appeal is already running against Election Day.

Sources:

• Fox News, "Biden-Appointed Judge Blocks Voter Fraud Probes in Battleground States Days Before Midterms," Fox News, October 2026.
• Jim Hoft, "Biden-Appointed Judge in California Blocks DHS Field Investigations Into Potential Noncitizen Voters Ahead of Midterms," The Gateway Pundit, October 2026.
• Teri Christoph, "Foreign-Born Biden Judge Drops Election Bomb on DHS Just Days Before the Midterms," RedState, October 22, 2026.