The American judiciary stops Trump’s move regarding voters suspected of being non-citizens.. What is the story?

- A federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked efforts by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to send election officials lists of people “suspected to be noncitizens,” and to require them to sequester the ballots of those voters for further investigation. The US administration followed this procedure last month in the states of California and Washington.

The injunction, issued late Monday evening by Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, states that the administration may have violated federal privacy laws by disclosing voter data and lacked the legal authority to distribute these lists. Chutkan was appointed to her position during the presidency of Barack Obama.

The ruling, issued hours before the start of the midterm elections in the United States, represents the latest legal setback to the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on states to adopt more stringent procedures to verify the citizenship of voters, even with the elections already underway, and to involve the federal government in the electoral processes administered by the states. Local elections officials and election experts said that federal databases may mistakenly include eligible US citizens to vote on lists of suspected non-citizens, because Department of Homeland Security officials compared federal data with state voter records, which are outdated and incomplete, which could lead to inaccurate results.

Courts had halted a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice, demanding the isolation of ballots in California cast by people whose names appeared on a list prepared by the Trump administration that included 20,000 people suspected of being non-citizens. US President Donald Trump escalated the case to the Supreme Court on Monday, which quickly rejected the administration’s efforts.

In a separate case, a federal judge restricted the ability of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to require election officials in any state to segregate ballots, expunge the names of voters from election records, or stop processing ballots. Another judge also barred the administration from asking election officials to change their procedures, or threatening them with prosecution.