type: timeline_event
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota state officials on January 26, 2026, requesting the state's voter rolls including information on individuals who receive public assistance, claiming it would be beneficial for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to perform immigration enforcement operations. The request came during ongoing protests against ICE's Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which had included the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent on January 7 and the detention of Native Americans and U.S. citizen teenagers through racial profiling.
The Minnesota voter rolls request exemplified DOJ's nationwide campaign to obtain full voter registration lists from states, including partial Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, birth dates, names, and addresses. DOJ filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia for failing to provide the requested voter data, ostensibly for reviewing state compliance with election laws but explicitly linking the data to immigration enforcement in the Minnesota request.
The explicit connection between voter registration data and ICE enforcement raised concerns about chilling voter registration among immigrant communities and naturalized citizens, particularly given the Trump administration's stated denaturalization quota of 1,000 citizens announced by Stephen Miller on January 1, 2026. Critics noted that DOJ's request effectively threatened voters who receive public assistance with potential immigration scrutiny, creating a surveillance infrastructure linking voting, social services, and immigration enforcement.
The California federal court had already dismissed DOJ's lawsuit to compel that state's voter rolls in January 2026. The Minnesota request represented an escalation of DOJ's voter data campaign by explicitly stating the immigration enforcement rationale rather than relying solely on election law compliance justifications. The fusion of voter registration, public assistance records, and immigration enforcement exemplified the systematic integration of multiple government databases for political targeting and immigrant community suppression.