A US fed­er­al judge, who was born in Trinidad and To­ba­go, has come un­der fire by a US Con­gress­woman and an of­fi­cial from the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, af­ter she blocked the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion from cre­at­ing a cen­tralised data­base con­tain­ing So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty num­bers, in­for­ma­tion about vot­ers’ cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus, and oth­er sen­si­tive da­ta.

Ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle in The Hill, Dis­trict Judge Sparkle Sook­nanan said of­fi­cials across nu­mer­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies “hap­haz­ard­ly com­bined and re­pur­posed the pri­vate in­for­ma­tion of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, in­clud­ing cit­i­zen­ship da­ta that they knew to be un­re­li­able” in or­der to com­ply with Pres­i­dent Trump’s March ex­ec­u­tive or­der at­tempt­ing to over­haul fed­er­al elec­tions.

The or­der re­quired the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a list of el­i­gi­ble vot­ers based on avail­able cit­i­zen­ship da­ta and di­rect­ed the US Postal Ser­vice to de­liv­er mail-in bal­lots on­ly to in­di­vid­u­als on each state’s ap­proved vot­er roll.

Trump specif­i­cal­ly di­rect­ed the So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion to cre­ate a “State Cit­i­zen­ship List” de­rived from its da­ta, nat­u­ral­i­sa­tion records and the Sys­tem­at­ic Alien Ver­i­fi­ca­tion for En­ti­tle­ments data­base, an ex­ist­ing data­base main­tained by the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (DHS) that is used to de­ter­mine el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for fed­er­al pro­grammes.

“Since then, states have part­nered with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to ac­cess the data­base and are ac­tive­ly re­mov­ing Unit­ed States cit­i­zens from vot­er rolls based on in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion,” Sook­nanan wrote in her 75-page rul­ing.

“All in all, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has know­ing­ly tram­pled on the pri­va­cy rights of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens in a man­ner that threat­ens the sa­cred right to vote. This Court can­not stand idly by while that hap­pens,” she added.

Sook­nanan said ef­forts to es­tab­lish the data­base were un­law­ful and vi­o­lat­ed the So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty Act, Pri­va­cy Act and Ad­min­is­tra­tive Pro­ce­dure Act. She ruled in favour of the League of Women Vot­ers, who brought the law­suit against DHS.

“This pro­tects mil­lions from base­less in­ves­ti­ga­tions and un­law­ful vot­er roll purges—a crit­i­cal win for vot­ing rights,” Democ­ra­cy For­ward wrote in a state­ment on the rul­ing.

The Hill said the White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment. But it said the DHS point­ed to a state­ment from James Per­ci­val, who serves as gen­er­al coun­sel for the de­part­ment.

“It’s amaz­ing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solv­ing prob­lems they in­sist do not ex­ist. Judge Sparkle Sok­nanan’s lat­est rul­ing pre­vent­ing DHS from ad­dress­ing alien vot­ing is just the lat­est ex­am­ple,” Per­ci­val wrote in a post on the so­cial plat­form X.

Con­gress­woman Nan­cy Mace of South Car­oli­na al­so wad­ed in­to Jus­tice Sook­nanan. She said in a post, “No one born in an­oth­er coun­try should be serv­ing in our gov­ern­ment. Judges in­clud­ed … A for­eign-born judge block­ing ef­forts to ver­i­fy Amer­i­can elec­tions are de­cid­ed by Amer­i­can cit­i­zens … This is not about where some­one was born. This is about who they serve. One al­le­giance. One coun­try. Amer­i­ca FIRST.”