ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A federal judge on Friday ordered Virginia to reinstate more than 1,600 voter registrations that it said had been illegally purged over the past two months, in an effort to prevent non-citizens from voting.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles granted a request for an injunction filed against Virginia election officials by the Justice Department, which claimed voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a silent period of 90 days before the November election, which prevents states from making large-scale changes to their rules. electoral lists.

State officials said they would appeal. The decision also drew criticism from former President Donald Trump, who posted on social media that the decision “is a completely unacceptable travesty.”

“Only American citizens should be allowed to vote,” Trump wrote.

In issuing her ruling Friday, Giles bristled at the suggestion that she was restoring voting rights to noncitizens. She said the state lacked evidence that the purged voters were noncitizens, but it canceled their registrations anyway, in violation of federal law.

“I don’t deal in beliefs,” she told a Virginia lawyer when he again called those removed from the rolls non-citizens. “I’m dealing with evidence.”

THE Ministry of Justice t and private groupsincluding the League of Women Voters, said many of the 1,600 voters whose registrations were canceled were in fact citizens whose registrations were canceled due to bureaucratic errors or simple mistakes like an incorrectly checked box on a form.

Justice Department attorney Sejal Jhaveri said during an all-day injunction hearing Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, that this is precisely why federal law prevents states from implement systematic changes to voter lists in the 90 days before an election, “to avoid damage to eligibility.” expelled voters at a time when it is difficult to remedy.”

Giles said Friday that the state is not completely prohibited from removing non-citizens from voter rolls during the 90-day silent period, but must do so on an individualized basis rather than according to the automated and systematic program employed by the State.

State officials argued, unsuccessfully, that the canceled registrations followed careful procedures targeting people explicitly identifying themselves as noncitizens with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Charles Cooper, the state’s attorney, said during arguments Thursday that federal law was never intended to provide protection to noncitizens, who by definition cannot vote in federal elections.

“Congress could not have intended to prevent the removal…of people who were never eligible to vote,” Cooper argued.

The plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit, however, said many people are wrongly identified as noncitizens by the DMV simply by checking the wrong box on a form. They haven’t been able to identify exactly how many of the 1,600 purged voters are actually citizens – Virginia only this week identified the names and addresses of those affected in response to a court order – but provided anecdotal evidence of people whose registrations were wrongly canceled.

Cooper acknowledged that some of the 1,600 voters identified by the state as non-citizens may well be citizens, but he said their re-registration on the rolls would mean that, in all likelihood, “hundreds of non-citizens would return to the polls.” these lists. , it nullifies a legal vote and it is a harm,” he said.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order in August requiring daily checks of DMV data against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.

State officials said any voters identified as non-citizens were notified and had two weeks to challenge their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form verifying their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.

Before Youngkin’s executive order, the state conducted monthly checks of voter rolls against DMV data, according to a state law passed in 2006.

Youngkin said the Justice Department was wrongly targeting him because he enforced a law that had been followed by his predecessors, including Democrats, even though they had not taken the additional step of ordering daily checks as he did in his decree.

“Let’s be clear about what just happened: Just eleven days before a presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to re-register more than 1,500 individuals, who identified as non-citizens, on the voter rolls,” Youngkin said in a statement. Friday hearing.

Giles questioned the timing of Youngkin’s executive order, which was issued on August 7, at the very beginning of the 90-day quiet period required by federal law.

“It is no coincidence that this was announced exactly on the 90th day” of the period of silence, she said Friday from the bench.

His injunction requires that voter registrations be reinstated for all those canceled as a result of Youngkin’s executive order, and that letters be sent within five days to notify those voters of their reinstated status. The letters will also include a disclaimer informing these individuals that if they are indeed non-citizens, they are prohibited from voting under federal law.

The plaintiffs had asked the judge to grant those voters an extension of time to request absentee ballots, but Giles denied that request, saying it would cause confusion.

Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares issued a statement after Friday’s hearing criticizing the decision.

“It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter,” he said. “Yet today, a court – urged by the Biden-Harris Justice Department – ​​ordered Virginia to re-register the names of non-citizens on the voter rolls, just days before a presidential election. »

U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who had alerted Justice Department officials to the referrals. welcomed the decision.

“Governor Youngkin’s purges have served only one purpose: to disenfranchise thousands of legally voting citizens of the Commonwealth. It stops today,” he said.

Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.

A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week the state ordered to restore the eligibility of more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible non-citizens. Testimony from state officials in the case showed that about 2,000 of the 3,251 voters rendered inactive were actually legally registered citizens.