Chief Judge James "Jeb" Boasberg ordered the Trump administration on Friday to hand its list of 20,000 alleged unlawful California voters to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) by Friday evening, so the group can check whether any of its own members or clients are on it. The order, issued at a Friday hearing in Washington, bars CHIRLA from passing the list beyond its own team, but allows it to state publicly whether members appear to be on it.
The order came in Trujillo v. DHS — a separate lawsuit from the Democrats' DSCC v. Trump case covered below, where Boasberg's order naming the states was due Friday noon and his ruling is due Monday. CHIRLA and a California voter sued to challenge the administration's drive to identify alleged illegal voters and send their names to county officials for immediate review. CHIRLA says it has taken calls from worried citizens who say they will not vote, or who want to know whether they are on the government's list.
The fight began on October 13, when the Justice Department gave Los Angeles County election chief Dean Logan a letter and a password-protected drive with information on more than 20,000 people federal officials consider likely noncitizens, demanded a review within 48 hours, and sought to stop ballots tied to the list being counted until citizenship was verified. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber was also a target of the demands. When California refused, the department sued the state and its election officials on October 15 — and on October 28, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter denied its request for a temporary restraining order in that California case. The department has appealed.
The Justice Department says it asked California to work collaboratively to identify any noncitizens registered to vote, and that its letters merely notify states of potential violations of federal law. For California voters, the plaintiffs' core claim is that naturalized citizens are the people most exposed to a wrong flag, because their files show years as noncitizens — an old record can make a lawful voter look like an illegal one days before an election.
The judge who ordered President Trump's deportation planes turned around last year spent Thursday doubting the Democrats who now need him. Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the federal district court in Washington ended the first hearing in the Democratic groups' election lawsuit with an order of his own: by noon on Friday, the Trump administration must identify every state it has sent demands to since July 1 — demands telling states to remove specific voters from the rolls, set aside ballots, or refuse to issue ballots.
What Boasberg did not do matters as much. He granted the plaintiffs only part of their request for discovery and pointedly did not decide their request for a temporary restraining order against the administration. He told the courtroom he appeared skeptical that the plaintiffs even have standing to sue, saying it may be too speculative to assume the administration will threaten more states. "I don't doubt for a minute that you have legitimate concerns with what you're raising," he said. "My biggest concern is your standing to do so." He told the plaintiffs' lawyer the Democrats may use whatever the government hands over to try to fix that problem: "You're going to need to give me something based on what they give you."
Both sides file again over the weekend, and he will rule on Monday, the day before Election Day.
For ordinary voters, Friday's deadline is the part that counts. The disclosure will show, state by state, where the administration's demands actually went — and whether any state quietly did what it was asked and struck voters off the rolls days before the election. A voter removed that way may not find out until he reaches the polling station on Tuesday. The lawsuit itself names naturalised citizens as the voters most exposed: people who did everything the law asked, registered lawfully, and now face having their registration challenged or their ballot set aside on the strength of a letter they never saw.
The plaintiffs are three national Democratic organisations, the Nevada Democratic Party, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and a California voter who is a naturalised citizen. They allege that President Trump violated the Voting Rights Act by pressuring states to remove voters from the rolls and threatening election officials with criminal prosecution — a pattern they say is meant to frighten officials into compliance and to intimidate lawful voters, above all naturalised citizens. They point to the president's threats to "nationalize the voting" and to jail California election officials. Their lawyer, Uzoma Nkwonta, argued that the Justice Department has escalated its intimidation in the run-up to Election Day, that other states may have received letters and quietly complied, and that the government's account of its own letters should not simply be taken on trust.
The government answered in full that its letters are not coercive. Its lawyer, Christian Dibblee, told the court that merely sending the letters does not forecast or predict any future action by the government, that none of the letters threatens prosecution, and that what a state does after receiving one is entirely up to that state. The plaintiffs' case, he said, rests on "a fairly long chain of speculative possibilities" — possibilities that depend on third parties acting in ways that have not happened. On the government's account, a letter is a request, not an order, and no voter has been removed by the federal government at all.
The surprise running through Thursday's hearing has a history. On March 15, 2025, Boasberg blocked the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants and verbally ordered planes already in the air carrying them to El Salvador to be returned to the United States. The flights went on anyway. He later found probable cause to believe the government had committed criminal contempt over the flights, while the Supreme Court lifted his restraining order on the ground that the challenges had been brought in the wrong court. President Trump publicly attacked him and called for his impeachment, and the Justice Department later filed a misconduct complaint against him; their fight over the contempt inquiry is still being argued in the appeals court. He is, by any measure, the judge this administration has clashed with most over its deportation drive.
That is why people are asking whether the deportation judge has repented. On Thursday's showing, he has not ruled for the administration — he has questioned whether its opponents have built a case a court can act on, and refused to block anything until they do. The answer comes in two parts: the list of states at noon on Friday, which will show how far the demands reached, and his ruling on Monday, on the eve of the election those demands were about.
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