DOJ said it had no plans to share voter data with DHS. Guess what it’s now planning to do

The Trump administration’s sweeping campaign to force states to hand over sensitive voter registration data is colliding with a new revelation that could undermine its cases — and raise serious questions about whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) was fully candid in federal court.

According to a CBS News report published Thursday, DOJ is working to provide voter registration data to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), potentially for immigration enforcement purposes.

In court, DOJ has repeatedly downplayed — and in some instances denied — that voter data would be used that way, saying doing so would be inconsistent with the department’s key reason for wanting the data.

In lawsuits, the department has argued it is seeking unredacted voter rolls to ensure compliance with federal election laws like the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) — a law that sets baseline standards for maintaining voter registration lists.

If DOJ is seeking voter data under the banner of election oversight but planning to use it for immigration enforcement, that could undermine the legal basis for compelling states to turn it over.

In a March 19 hearing over DOJ’s bid to obtain Connecticut’s rolls, a federal judge confronted DOJ attorney James Tucker with a concern raised by states and voting rights groups: that the government’s real motive in demanding voter rolls was to share that data with DHS.

“Counsel [for defendants] had suggested in his opening that, you know, the real motive behind this is that the Department intends to transmit everything to Homeland Security for immigration enforcement purposes. And that’s not correct,” Tucker said.

Judge Kari Dooley asked whether DOJ could guarantee that the data would not ultimately be shared with DHS.

“I simply cannot state what the Attorney General’s purpose may be at some other time,” Tucker said. “What I can say is, as of today, there has been no directive or instruction that the data, the non-publicly available data, is going to be transmitted to any other agency and it’s going to be kept in full compliance with the Privacy Act.”

The court zeroed in on the issue.

“So, as you stand here right now without a limitation on the Department’s ability to transfer it to DHS, you don’t know, or you believe the plan is, to provide it to DHS?” Dooley, asked.

“I don’t believe that’s a decision that’s been made,” he said, adding that such a step would not be consistent with DOJ’s stated purpose of enforcing federal election laws. “Under the circumstances it’s not consistent with what the United States has specifically stated in its basis and purpose, which is for purposes of doing what we do in the Civil Rights Division, which is looking for enforcement and compliance with the NVRA and HAVA.”

That exchange — a denial of current plans paired with an inability to rule out future action — now looks markedly different in light of reporting that DOJ is actively moving toward sharing voter data with DHS.

Judges are not just evaluating if DOJ is following proper procedure in seeking voter rolls. They are also asking whether the government is acting in “good faith.”

In Connecticut, the court also probed whether DOJ’s request could be pretextual — meaning a legal justification masking a different goal. Tucker’s answers, emphasizing what DOJ is not doing “as of today” while declining to rule out future uses, reflect that tension.

DOJ has made similar representations in other courts as it continues its nationwide grab for sensitive voter data.

In another hearing in Minnesota, on March 3, the court directly asked whether the voter data DOJ had already collected from other states was being used for immigration enforcement.

“Is the information that’s been gathered from other states being used for immigration enforcement?” the court asked.

“Not to my knowledge. Now, no. No, Your Honor,” Tucker responded. Pressed further, he reiterated the point. “Not to my knowledge, no, Your Honor, not with the data that we are getting.”

Voting rights groups have stressed that the DOJ’s stated purpose — enforcing election law — could be a pretext for broader uses of the data, including sharing it with immigration authorities or building a national voter database.

The agreements DOJ has used to obtain voter data from states also underscore the stakes.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Alaska — one of several states that has already turned over its voter rolls — lays out strict limits on how the data can be handled. The agreement restricts access within DOJ to specific personnel, states that identifying voter data “will not be shared by the Department,” and allows only limited external use, such as in court proceedings or with contractors assisting in analysis.

Notably, the agreement does not mention DHS or explicitly authorize sharing voter data with other federal agencies. 

Instead, it says the data will be maintained under the Privacy Act and subject to a broader system of records notice — leaving unclear whether that framework could permit wider sharing beyond what states were led to expect. 

DOJ has executed similar MOU’s with at least a dozen other states.