Trump Admin Files ‘Long Shot’ Lawsuit After California Wouldn’t Open a Thumb Drive of Alleged Non-Citizens

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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