The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday charged 28 legal permanent residents in California with election crimes, intensifying an escalating legal confrontation with state officials over voting procedures just weeks before the midterm elections.
Federal prosecutors also filed an emergency request asking a federal judge to block California election workers from processing ballots returned by people on a list of roughly 20,000 individuals the federal government identified as "likely noncitizens," NPR reported. The court motion followed a lawsuit filed late last week after Los Angeles County officials declined to investigate the names, which federal authorities delivered on a flash drive with a 48-hour deadline.
Federal Accusations and Warnings
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter announced the charges during a news conference, stating that the defendants faced counts including unlawful voting by an alien and making false claims of U.S. citizenship, ABC News reported. McCotter also declined to rule out potential criminal charges against election workers who knowingly process ballots from ineligible voters, citing federal aiding-and-abetting statutes.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli stated that the arrests were carried out under an enforcement push called "Operation Protect the Vote," according to the Los Angeles Times. Federal officials presented evidence alleging that 21 of the 28 defendants had cast ballots in past elections. Over the past seven weeks, federal authorities have charged 113 noncitizens across 20 states with voting or registration offenses, Essayli said.
State Officials Push Back
California leaders strongly disputed the federal government’s actions, characterizing the demands as legally baseless and disruptive to lawful voters. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote to the Justice Department that segregating or withholding ballots violates both state regulations and federal statutes, specifically citing the National Voter Registration Act, which forbids systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of an election.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that while individual instances of unlawful voting should be prosecuted, isolated cases do not demonstrate widespread fraud among California’s tens of millions of registered voters, the Los Angeles Times reported. In Los Angeles County, Clerk Dean Logan noted that county staff refused to open the Justice Department’s thumb drive because doing so violated established cybersecurity and data privacy protocols, ABC News reported.
Defendants Appear in Court
Four defendants appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon and were ordered released on personal recognizance, with preliminary hearings scheduled for Nov. 9. Eleven individuals were in federal custody following the initial arrests, according to The Guardian.
Several defendants expressed bewilderment over the charges. Ana Domínguez, a 60-year-old green card holder from El Salvador, was accused of fraudulently registering to vote in 2006 and making false statements on her naturalization paperwork, the Los Angeles Times reported. Domínguez said she had no recollection of registering and pointed out that government records show she never cast a ballot.
Omar Muñoz, a 72-year-old resident of Commerce, was arrested at his residence and charged with registering in 2019 and voting in several elections. His daughter told the Los Angeles Times that the family was investigating whether federal investigators confused her father with his U.S.-born son of the same name.
What Comes Next
Election law specialists noted that confirmed noncitizen voting remains extremely rare and often stems from bureaucratic errors, such as motor vehicle agency registration glitches. Rick Hasen, an election law scholar at UCLA School of Law, described the federal lawsuit against California as unlikely to succeed given constitutional limits on federal interference in state election administration, NPR reported.
A half-dozen civil rights and voting advocacy groups have moved to intervene in the federal court proceedings to contest the Justice Department’s emergency request. The federal judge overseeing the case has not yet issued a ruling on whether the state must withhold or segregate the disputed ballots.
