The Justice Department’s aggressive campaign to obtain unredacted voter records from dozens of states suffered another courtroom defeat Friday—and a federal judge said the government’s own documents exposed a possible immigration-enforcement purpose behind the effort.

U.S. District Judge Anne Traum dismissed the department’s lawsuit seeking Nevada’s complete voter-registration database, including names, birth dates, home addresses and sensitive identification information.

The ruling marked the Trump administration’s 22nd reported loss in cases seeking state voter rolls ahead of the midterm elections.

Justice Department officials have publicly presented the initiative as an election-integrity effort designed to identify and remove people who are legally ineligible to vote.

But an Office of Legal Counsel opinion cited in Traum’s ruling went further.

According to the document, the government wanted access to “full, unredacted voter rolls” to determine whether states were complying with federal requirements to remove ineligible registrants—including people allegedly in the country illegally.

More significantly, the opinion acknowledged that the project could have immigration-enforcement consequences.

“This activity may have incidental immigration consequences by providing [the Department of Homeland Security] updated information regarding the location of illegal aliens,” the opinion stated, according to Traum.

That language does not conclusively prove that deportation was the Justice Department’s sole or primary motive. Officials characterized any immigration consequences as “incidental.”

But it confirmed that information collected through the voter-roll initiative could potentially be shared with—or become useful to—the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That possibility immediately raised the stakes surrounding the requested data.

The federal government was not merely asking Nevada for a public list of registered voters. It demanded a file containing every available field, including each registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address and either a driver’s-license number or a portion of a Social Security number.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar refused.

His office described the demand as “unprecedented in its scope,” unsupported by a proper legal basis and accompanied by an unexplained sense of urgency.

Traum largely agreed.

The judge found that two letters sent by the Justice Department failed to identify specific facts suggesting that Nevada had violated federal election law or maintained its voter list improperly.

Neither communication, she wrote, “purported to allege facts showing a need for an investigation into Nevada’s state election system.”

Citing a similar ruling in another case, Traum summarized the government’s justification in stark terms: “no basis—none.”

The decision strikes at the foundation of a nationwide initiative targeting approximately 40 states.

Federal election laws require states to maintain accurate voter rolls and establish procedures for removing individuals who have died, relocated or otherwise become ineligible. Those maintenance programs must also comply with constitutional safeguards and federal protections against discriminatory or improperly timed removals.

The Justice Department can investigate potential violations. But it cannot necessarily obtain every piece of sensitive voter information merely by invoking “election integrity” without identifying a statutory basis or legitimate investigative need.

Critics fear that centralized access to unredacted voter databases could facilitate mass challenges, erroneous removals or immigration enforcement unrelated to election administration.

Those concerns are especially serious because citizenship status cannot reliably be determined from a person’s name, address or partial Social Security number alone. Naturalized citizens and other eligible voters could be mistakenly flagged if databases are incomplete or improperly matched.

The administration has not publicly demonstrated that large numbers of undocumented immigrants are registered or voting in Nevada. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and documented cases have historically been rare.

The ruling therefore focused less on whether Nevada should maintain accurate rolls—a responsibility it already has—and more on whether the Justice Department adequately justified the sweeping information it demanded.

It did not, Traum concluded.

The administration may appeal the dismissal or attempt to issue a new demand containing a more detailed legal justification. It could also continue pursuing similar cases in other jurisdictions.

But its repeated courtroom defeats suggest judges are increasingly skeptical of requests that combine enormous quantities of personal voter data with little individualized evidence of wrongdoing.

The OLC language creates an additional political problem.

Trump has made mass deportation a defining priority of his administration. ICE has expanded enforcement operations while facing accusations of excessive force, insufficient due process and politically motivated targeting.

Against that background, an acknowledgment that voter files might help DHS locate undocumented immigrants transforms what officials described as an administrative election review into something potentially broader.

For voters, the controversy raises a fundamental question: If they provide personal information to register for an election, can the federal government later repurpose that information for unrelated enforcement operations?

For the Justice Department, it raises an equally serious issue: Was “voter integrity” the complete explanation—or simply the most publicly acceptable one?

Traum’s ruling does not definitively answer that question. But by quoting the administration’s own legal opinion, it revealed that the government anticipated immigration consequences while demanding Nevada’s most sensitive voter data.

And after 22 reported defeats, the Justice Department still has not persuaded a court that its sweeping crusade has a sufficient legal foundation.