The U.S. Department of Justice charged 28 people from across California with illegally voting, registering to vote in federal elections or making false statements in citizenship paperwork, arresting 11, the agency announced on Monday, Oct. 19
The charges and arrests, part of the Trump administration’s push to “combat and root out fraud in U.S. elections,” federal officials said in a statement, come days after the DOJ filed a lawsuit against election officials in the state, asking a judge to stop California from counting midterm-election ballots from 20,000 voters the DOJ identified as “likely” noncitizens until their citizenship is independently verified.
On Monday, the U.S. government filed an emergency motion, requesting a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction that would allow for the mail-in ballots of those on the government’s list to be separated until their immigration status is verified to the DOJ’s satisfaction, said Trent McCotter, acting U.S. deputy attorney general.
“This is not some exercise in theory,” he said during a downtown Los Angeles press conference. “This causes real damage to real elections and real damage to American citizens.”
Voting is already underway in California ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, with mail-in ballots in the hands of some voters.
All 28 arrested are lawful permanent residents, an immigration status different from United States citizenship, that does not allow for voting, the DOJ said.
Some were charged with fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application, which asks if one has registered to vote, voted in an election, or falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen.
In all, federal officials said, illegal ballots were case 34 times by those charged since 2020.
Those arrested include foreign nationals living in Rancho Palos Verdes, Commerce, La Puente, Long Beach, Pico Rivera, West Covina, Wilmington, Carson, Anaheim and the West Adams neighborhood in Los Angeles. Others live in Northern and Central California and the San Diego area. They range in age from 30 to 72 years old.
Some of those charged voted twice in the same election, according to the DOJ. Eleven of the 28 have been arrested, with the others soon to be in custody, federal officials said.
McCotter said the list of 20,000 is likely to grow as the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security conduct more reviews of voter rolls.
McCotter said there have been elections across the United States in the last several years that were decided by extremely close margins, and it is important that citizens’ rightful votes aren’t “cancelled out” by noncitizen voting.
California officials have pushed back on the government’s calls for ballots to be withheld, with Secretary of State Shirley Weber saying in a letter to the Justice Department last week that federal officials had not provided evidence for the claim that 20,000 noncitizens are on the state’s voter rolls.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said last week that the state would not withhold ballots from any voter, pointing out that the Department of Homeland Security had previously said it suspected 190,000 voters on California’s rolls to be noncitizens, a number the Department of Justice now says is 20,000.
Monday, the Democratic state attorney general said there is no widespread voter fraud in California and that while “one-off” examples of voter fraud are possible, those instances are “a drop in the bucket” considering the state has 23 million registered voters.
Bonta said he expects his state to prevail in the federal government’s lawsuit, saying the Republican administration “has provided us with no facts of any ineligible voters, just a conclusory statement with no evidence to back it.”
To get their list, federal officials said public voter rolls were examined, and then the Department of Homeland Security used other government databases and public information; they looked at State Department records, passports, Social Security Administration information and “alien files.” Citizen records were checked to see if someone actually got citizenship from a parent or maybe is a naturalized citizen.
The charges and arrests in California are part of a national dragnet to federally prosecute illegal voters, with 113 people in 20 states having been charged with illegal voting or illegally registering to vote in the past seven weeks, McCotter said.
One defendant in the suit is Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan. His office did not immediately return a call for comment on Monday.
The Associated Press Contributed to this report.