Yellow Jacket InitiativeBy E. Lawrence Anderson, Yellow Jacket Initiative
On Thursday, October 15, 2026, the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) sued the Department of Homeland Security in federal court in Washington, D.C. (League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:26-cv-03602). The defendants include Secretary Markwayne Mullin, ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and USCIS.
Every fact below is the plaintiffs' account. The government has not answered, and nothing in the complaint has been tested in court.
The strongest case for DHS. Federal law makes it a crime for a noncitizen to vote for federal office (18 U.S.C. 611). A May 12, 2026 opinion of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that DOJ may obtain statewide voter lists and share them with DHS, and that keeping them fits the Privacy Act's law-enforcement exception, 5 U.S.C. 552a(e)(7). DHS may argue that the files sit inside systems of records it already has, so no new public notice was needed.
What the plaintiffs say happened. The complaint describes a chain of steps, citing internal documents obtained through a FOIA case and filed as exhibits in a separate California lawsuit:
- On March 6, 2026, ICE asked DOJ for voter lists under the Privacy Act's agency-to-agency provision, 552a(b)(7). On March 12, DOJ granted access after DHS signed a use agreement. A DOJ letter quoted in the complaint says DHS stated an "ability and intent to enrich the SVRL datasets with DHS records to allow for vetting via the SAVE system" (paragraphs 68-69).
- The complaint says an internal government email dated September 1, 2026 shows DHS holds some version of the voter lists of at least 47 states (paragraph 89). Its footnote for this cites a Reuters report of September 24, not the email itself.
- A June 1, 2026 HSI report records a "DOJ Dataset Intake" of 50.6 million records and a "DHS Dataset Intake" of 48.4 million records, the second described as obtained by a deputy assistant secretary "through independent sources of information" (paragraphs 93-94). The complaint does not say how much the two overlap, so we do not add them.
- The same report lists 26,563 USCIS-derived records prioritized and 1,586 leads sent to 24 HSI field offices (paragraph 95).
- The complaint says the files were combined with commercial data, that a May 26 HSI email discussed loading voter-roll data into an enforcement system called ELITE, and that people flagged as unlawful voters receive a record in TECS, the border-screening database (paragraphs 99-117).
What the plaintiffs are asking for. Five claims, all under the Administrative Procedure Act: that DHS lacks statutory authority; that it violated the Privacy Act's collection, accuracy and law-enforcement limits; that it published no system-of-records notice or new-use notice; that it skipped Paperwork Reduction Act clearance; and that the program is arbitrary and capricious. They ask the court to vacate the program, enjoin it, order the voter data deleted, and bar its use or sharing with DOJ.
The docket so far (as of October 23, 2026). Summonses issued on October 16. The same day, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan declined to treat the case as related to Trujillo v. DHS (No. 26-cv-3072), writing that this case "appears to be a challenge to a DHS policy of collecting, maintaining, and using voter records," and had it reassigned at random. It is now before Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who granted a lawyer's admission on October 19. We found no motion for emergency relief, answer or ruling on the merits.
How this fits with what we have reported. This is a new case. It is separate from the League's earlier suit over the SAVE citizenship check (No. 1:25-cv-03501), in which the Supreme Court stayed the lower court's order on September 25 (No. 26A308). The complaint argues that the voter-file holdings exist outside SAVE. It also cites the Justice Department's October 15 suit against California (paragraph 109), which we covered from its own complaint.
What is not established. The internal DHS documents are cited, not read by us, and several are heavily redacted. Some allegations rest on press reports and a whistleblower letter. The government's account has not been read because it has not been filed. Our docket check used the public CourtListener index, which can lag the court's own system.
Sources: Complaint, ECF 1, filed Oct. 15, 2026, D.D.C. No. 1:26-cv-03602, as posted by plaintiffs' counsel (42 pages), re-read October 23, 2026. Docket: CourtListener, checked October 23, 2026.
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