Justice Department seeks contempt action over CHIRLA data analysis

The Justice Department filed a request on Sunday asking a federal judge to hold an immigrant rights group in contempt of court.

The department argued that the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and its legal team disclosed information that Chief Judge James Boasberg had ordered them to keep private. Boasberg, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., granted the group access to a dataset on Friday. That dataset contains more than 20,000 names of people the Trump administration alleges are noncitizen voters in California. His order restricted the group to using the data solely to prove its legal standing in the lawsuit and barred them from revealing specific names.

CHIRLA attorneys filed documents on Saturday stating that their analysis showed more than 40% of the individuals on the government list do not appear in the state's voter file. The group also identified 22 people on the list who appear to be naturalized U.S. citizens. Additionally, the analysis suggested that thousands of other U.S. citizens were included on the list. The Justice Department contended in its Sunday filing that these findings were irrelevant to the specific question of whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue.

“The report’s political grandstanding about alleged inaccuracies that purportedly impact California voters generally, or comparisons between the government’s list and the full ‘California voter file,’ has no relevance to whether the particular plaintiffs in this case have standing,” the filing stated. The department suggested that Boasberg refer the matter to them for an investigation into potential criminal contempt. Alberto Lammers, a spokesman for the UCLA Voting Rights Project which conducted the analysis for CHIRLA, said in an emailed statement that the plaintiffs' counsel and experts fully complied with the court's orders.

In a separate legal battle, the Justice Department appealed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco. Thompson issued a decision late Friday that barred the department from demanding election offices remove possible noncitizens from rolls, separate their ballots, or threaten legal action. The department noted that Thompson ruled before the government could file its initial arguments. Thompson has scheduled a hearing on the appeal for Monday.

This appeal is part of a series of losses for the administration regarding its noncitizen voter lists. A federal judge in California previously rejected a demand that election officials separate ballots cast by these voters, warning that such last minute orders could wreak havoc on the state's election. Two appellate judges agreed with that assessment. California election officials maintain the list is full of errors and argue they lack the time to perform the legal work required to remove voters in the days before the election.

The administration claims it compiled the list carefully by comparing state voter registration data with federal citizenship records. The Justice Department has issued subpoenas to California election offices and warned officials that they could face criminal charges if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote.