The US Department of Justice has filed charges against 28 green card holders in California, accused of fraudulently registering to vote and voting illegally.
The crackdown marks a new escalation in the federal government’s ongoing efforts against alleged non-citizen voting, efforts that Democrats and voting rights groups say are part of a Trump administration strategy to sow doubt about the results of the upcoming midterm elections.
The Justice Department announced Monday that 28 noncitizens across California face charges including making false statements on a naturalization application and fraudulently registering to vote, crimes punishable by up to five years in prison. The defendants are legal permanent residents, who have legal status in the United States but are not eligible citizens to vote.
A Justice Department spokesperson said 21 of the 28 defendants voted illegally. Eleven of the defendants have already been taken into custody and arrests are underway, the Ministry of Justice said. Prosecutors alleged the defendants lied under oath on voter registration applications.
Non-citizen voting is extremely rare, and election experts have expressed concerns that the Justice Department’s crackdown could disenfranchise U.S. citizens.
The arrests came days after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against California, demanding that the courts block the state from tabulating certain ballots in November’s high-stakes midterm elections. The Justice Department previously sent Los Angeles County election officials a USB drive allegedly containing the names of non-citizens illegally registered to vote. The Justice Department demanded that California authorities confirm, within 48 hours, whether those on the list were citizens and void the ballots of those who were not confirmed.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit says it sent California authorities a list of more than 20,000 people who the federal government says are likely noncitizens and who received ballots by mail.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber condemned the Justice Department’s demands as “outrageous,” saying federal officials had for months made “vague and unsubstantiated claims” about alleged voter fraud in the state. In a letter last week to the Justice Department, Weber, a Democrat, noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first claimed in July that more than 190,000 registered voters in the state “may be” noncitizens, but had since revised that figure to 20,000 while continuing to refuse to share details about its data and methodology.
Weber said that “treating the thousands of voters on the DOJ list as ineligible until proven otherwise” would violate federal law that prohibits states from systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from voter rolls in the run-up to a federal election.
There are 23.1 million registered voters in California, according to recent state figures.
“This is voter intimidation and a blatant attempt to undermine confidence in our midterm elections,” said Janice Hahn, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “These arrests are being used to paint a picture of widespread voter fraud when we know that is not the case. California has laws in place to protect the integrity of our elections, and Los Angeles County fully complies with them.”
Trent McCotter, acting assistant U.S. attorney general, acknowledged that the government’s list of presumed non-citizen voters in California might not be accurate when asked by a reporter to provide more details about the methodology.
“There may be names that ultimately are citizens. We’re not perfect, and that’s why we’ve asked California to cooperate with us,” McCotter said.
Regarding the government’s changing estimates for the number of allegedly fraudulent registrants in the state, McCotter said, “Think of it like 190,000 is the ceiling, 20,000 is the floor. Twenty thousand is the one we’re most confident about… 190,000 includes ‘medium confidence’ and ‘low confidence’ — a sort of initial reduction that hasn’t yet been manually verified.”
Court documents released Monday suggest at least some of those charged did not know their eligibility. Several of them agreed to voluntarily speak with investigators and were in the process of applying to become naturalized citizens.
One man, Erick Ronaldo Soto, told investigators he registered to vote with the help of canvassers outside a supermarket. Soto, who has been a legal permanent resident since 1976, told investigators he went to vote with his wife and was asked by poll workers if he wanted to vote. When he said he couldn’t do it because he wasn’t a citizen, he said “they told him it was OK because they were going to check whether it was valid or not,” according to an investigator’s affidavit submitted to federal court. Soto told interviewers he cast a blank vote because he didn’t know who to vote for. Investigators also said Soto lied about his citizenship before, in 1992, while trying to re-enter the country from Mexico.
Another person charged, José Probitsado Amaro, has been a legal permanent resident since 1993, according to court documents. He told investigators he didn’t remember registering to vote, but acknowledged receiving a 2024 ballot (California automatically sends every registered voter an absentee ballot).
“With what was happening in California and the economy, he decided to fill it out and sign it. He confirmed that it was not with bad intentions. He said that if he was guilty, then he admitted it. He said that he was not a person who lies,” the investigator wrote. “He said he didn’t intend to defraud anyone.”
Another person charged is a 61-year-old Tongan national who has been a legal permanent resident since 1969. Prosecutors say he registered and voted in 2024, then applied for citizenship this year. In his application, he said he never falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen.
It is not yet clear how the accused were registered. California is one of several states with automatic voter registration, a process by which voters are automatically registered to vote when they interact with the DMV unless they opt out.
It was not immediately clear whether the defendants had attorneys, and the federal public defender’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
McCotter sent a letter to election officials on Friday threatening to sue any official who tabulated a non-citizen’s ballot. Experts say the threat is legally specious and a blatant attempt to intimidate those responsible. When a reporter asked Monday whether the DoJ planned to investigate rank-and-file election workers, McCotter said “knowingly” helping someone vote illegally could lead to charges: “It’s a very well-established legal doctrine – aiding and abetting. »
Some federal efforts to weed out presumed non-citizen voters have failed in other states. Last month, Nevada state officials said DHS misidentified 185 people registered to vote in the state as non-citizens.
The Justice Department said Monday that in recent weeks, federal prosecutors have filed charges against a total of 112 people in 20 states for alleged registration and illegal voting violations.
Gn headline
