United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

The Department of Justice escalated its dispute with California over a list of voters flagged as possible noncitizens, filing an emergency lawsuit Oct. 15 in federal court in the Central District of California after state officials missed a roughly 48-hour deadline set by Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter to review the names. DOJ had sent Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan and Secretary of State Shirley Weber a password-protected thumb drive naming more than 20,000 "likely noncitizens," identified through a multiagency USCIS and Homeland Security Investigations review of state voter and federal citizenship data. The 15-page complaint accuses California of violating the Constitution's supremacy clause by knowingly sending and counting mail ballots from likely noncitizens, and asks the court to order the state to set aside such ballots until citizenship is verified. Attorney General Todd Blanche called the alleged practice "state-facilitated voter fraud."

Logan's office declined to open the drive, citing data privacy protocols, while Weber argued federal officials provided insufficient evidence. Governor Gavin Newsom called the lawsuit a "sad, desperate attempt" by President Trump to suppress California voters weeks before Election Day. The suit is the administration's first direct attempt to block vote-counting, following a broader push including a blocked citizenship-verification mandate, a mail-voting executive order partly struck down by the Supreme Court, and roughly 30 similar voter-roll suits against other states with limited success. Senate Democrats have demanded oversight briefings on the administration's election-interference efforts.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review whether immigrants already living in the United States are entitled to a bond hearing before being detained indefinitely, a case with direct implications for Leonel Bolivar Linares, a 29-year-old Venezuelan former custodian for the St. Johns County School District in Florida. ICE detained him near St. Johns Parkway on Aug. 6, and he has since been held for roughly six weeks, moved from Baker County to El Paso, Texas, and now New Mexico.

Court records show Bolivar Linares entered the U.S. legally in 2023 with federal parole, later received Temporary Protected Status under Venezuela's designation, and had a pending asylum application with approved work authorization through 2027. His TPS ended when the Trump administration terminated Venezuela's designation in October 2025. His attorney filed a petition arguing he is entitled to a bond hearing. Federal appeals courts have split on the underlying legal question, prompting Supreme Court review. Arguments are expected in coming months, with the ruling likely to affect detention policy for many immigrants nationwide.

Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, have asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate a whistleblower's allegations that a DHS unit improperly accessed the state's voter registration data. The disclosure claims USCIS's Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate was assigned an "unlawful voter initiative" using questionable data and methods to flag purported unlawful voters, potentially including U.S. citizens who could face law enforcement records based on rushed reviews. Personnel were reportedly held to quotas of 40 subjects a day and told to misrepresent themselves to access the data, with the effort aimed at completion by September 12.

Padilla and Schiff argue the initiative appears designed to find or manufacture evidence for voter fraud claims ahead of the 2026 midterms, warning of serious consequences for naturalized citizens wrongly flagged. They previously urged DHS and USCIS leadership to halt the effort. A DHS spokesperson defended the practice, saying the department cross-referenced publicly available voter rolls with known aliens in its systems. The Trump administration has separately pursued voter data from other states, with a federal judge earlier dismissing a related DOJ suit against California as "unprecedented and illegal."

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina is pursuing denaturalization and fraud cases against four men, citing false statements made during naturalization proceedings. A federal grand jury indicted Sha Bahadur Ghaley, a Bhutanese-born naturalized citizen, on naturalization fraud charges after he allegedly lied about prior criminal conduct on his 2017 application; he was later convicted in 2024 of sexually abusing a child and sentenced to prison and lifetime sex-offender registration. He faces up to 10 additional years if convicted of fraud.

Separately, between June and August, prosecutors filed civil denaturalization complaints against three men — Benjamin Hernandez (also known as Luis Elder Alvarado), Han Xiong Chen, and Kevin Yun-Sang Kim — alleging each concealed prior deportations, false identities, or immigration violations to obtain citizenship. Officials say the cases stem partly from a new fingerprint-comparison method used to detect identity fraud in past naturalization applications. U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson said such fraud takes citizenship opportunities from eligible applicants and pledged continued enforcement.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills' administration is asking an Augusta court to throw out an arbitrator's ruling that found the state illegally fired epidemiologist David Abafi after his work authorization briefly lapsed. Abafi, who immigrated from Nigeria in 2021, worked at the Maine Center for Disease Control from early 2024 until his termination in April 2025, when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied his green card application and gave him 18 days' notice that his work authorization would end. The union sought unpaid leave for him instead under the contract, but the state refused, citing legal obligations tied to employing unauthorized workers.

An arbitrator sided with the union in June, noting Abafi's authorization was restored by July 2025, and ordered the state to make him whole. Maine's lawsuit, filed Sept. 10, argues the arbitrator exceeded his authority, citing the Supreme Court's Hoffman Plastic Compounds precedent. The union calls the state's case "frivolous" and says the ruling is binding. Abafi has taken another job but could reclaim his position and back pay.

New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Santa Clara County, King County and 22 states and the District of Columbia — including Illinois, California, Colorado, Washington and others, plus Pennsylvania's governor — have sued in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York over a Department of Homeland Security rule change to the "public charge" standard set to take effect Friday, Sept. 18. The rule lets immigration officials deny green cards or visas to applicants deemed likely to use any means-tested public benefit, including SNAP, Medicaid, housing vouchers or school lunch programs, reversing a narrower 2022 rule limited to cash assistance. It applies to family- and employment-based visa applicants; refugees, asylum recipients, TPS holders and certain trafficking or domestic violence victims are exempt. A similar policy from Trump's first term was blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020.

Plaintiffs, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James and joined by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and Illinois Deputy Attorney General Cara Hendrickson, call the rule unlawful, "arbitrary and capricious," and lacking clear standards for how benefit use counts against applicants. They warn it could push eligible immigrant and mixed-status families, including U.S. citizen children, away from benefits out of fear, straining local health, housing and school systems and costing states billions. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Colorado AG Phil Weiser led public criticism. DHS and USCIS defend the rule as protecting taxpayers from subsidizing dependent immigrants and dismiss the suits as politically motivated.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs criticized a reported Department of Homeland Security effort to investigate voter fraud across multiple states, saying he learned of it through CNN rather than from federal officials directly. CNN reported that DHS's Homeland Security Investigations unit, part of ICE, is launching a "coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative" in Washington, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut, a unit that typically handles trafficking and smuggling cases rather than election matters.

Hobbs called the move wasteful, noting Washington recorded only five voter fraud cases out of 90 million ballots cast between 2008 and 2025, and warned it could sow confusion ahead of the midterms. DHS defended the initiative, citing tens of thousands of potential noncitizen voter-roll matches flagged through its SAVE verification program and reiterating Trump administration calls for stricter voter ID requirements. Experts say no evidence supports claims of widespread voter fraud, and longstanding DOJ policy discourages such probes close to elections, though DHS is not bound by that policy.

Armelle Bondonga, a Louisville resident who came to the U.S. as an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was taken into ICE custody on Aug. 12 after appearing for a scheduled marriage-based immigration interview. Her attorney, Arianit Osmani, says she has no criminal history and voluntarily attended the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services interview with her husband, a U.S. citizen, rather than evading authorities. The couple has a U.S.-citizen child.

Her husband's Form I-130 petition remains pending, and her father's related asylum case is before the Board of Immigration Appeals. Osmani says Bondonga now has a potential path to permanent residency through marriage, but an existing removal order complicates that process. Bondonga previously attended Waggener High School and was active with Future Ancestors, a student group formed after Breonna Taylor's death. Students at Louisville's J. Graham Brown School staged a protest opposing ICE policies, and local officials, including Councilwoman Shameka Parrish-Wright, have voiced support. State Rep. Nima Kulkarni has connected Bondonga's family with additional legal counsel through her immigrant legal defense fund.