The US Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against ۲۸ green card holders in California accused of fraudulently registering to vote and casting illegal ballots.
The crackdown marks another escalation in the federal government’s ongoing efforts against alleged noncitizen voting, efforts that Democrats and voting rights groups say are part of a strategy by the Trump administration to sow doubt in the results of the upcoming midterm elections.
The justice department announced Monday that ۲۸ noncitizens from across California were facing charges, including making false statements in a naturalization application and fraudulently signing up to vote, felonies that could carry five years in prison. The defendants are lawful permanent residents, who have legal status in the US but are not citizens authorized to vote.
A justice department spokesperson said ۲۱ of the ۲۸ defendants had cast unlawful ballots. Eleven of the defendants have already been taken into custody and arrests were ongoing, the justice department said. Prosecutors alleged the defendants lied under oath in voter registration applications.
Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare, and election experts have raised concerns that the justice department’s crackdowns could disenfranchise US citizens.
The arrests came days after the justice department sued California, demanding the courts block the state from tabulating certain ballots in the high-stakes November midterms. The justice department had previously sent Los Angeles county election officials a thumb drive that purportedly contained the names of noncitizens who were unlawfully registered to vote. The justice department demanded that California officials, within ۴۸ hours, confirm whether those on the list were citizens and set aside the ballots of those who remained unconfirmed.
The justice department’s lawsuit said it had sent California officials a list of more than ۲۰,۰۰۰ people who the federal government “believes are likely noncitizens” who were sent ballots by mail.
California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, has condemned the justice department’s demands as “outrageous”, saying federal officials had for months made “vague and unsubstantiated allegations” 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 ۱۹۰,۰۰۰ registered voters in the state “may be” noncitizens, but had since revised that number down to ۲۰,۰۰۰ while continuing to refuse to share details about its data and methodology.
Weber said that “treating the thousands of voters on DOJ’s list as ineligible until proven otherwise” would violate federal law that prohibits states from systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from voter lists in the lead-up to a federal election.
There are ۲۳.۱ million registered voters in California, according to recent state figures.
“This is voter intimidation and a blatant attempt to undermine trust 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 LA county is fully abiding by them.”
Trent McCotter, the acting US deputy attorney general, acknowledged the government’s list of alleged noncitizen voters in California might not be accurate when pressed by a reporter to provide more details about the methodology.
“There may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens. We’re not perfect, and that’s why we’ve asked California to cooperate with us,” McCotter said.
On the government’s changing estimates about the volume of allegedly fraudulent registrants in the state, McCotter said: “Think of it like ۱۹۰,۰۰۰ is the ceiling, ۲۰,۰۰۰ is the floor. Twenty-thousand are the ones we’re the most confident about … ۱۹۰,۰۰۰ includes ‘medium confidence’, ‘lower confidence’ – kind of the initial cut that have not been manually verified yet.”
Court papers made public on Monday suggest at least some of the people charged were confused about their eligibility. Several agreed to voluntary interviews 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 of a supermarket. Soto, who has been a legal permanent resident since ۱۹۷۶, told investigators he went with his wife to vote and was asked by poll workers if he wanted to cast a ballot. When he said that he couldn’t because he wasn’t a citizen, he said “they told him it was OK because they were going to check if it was valid or not”, according to an affidavit from an investigator submitted in federal court. Soto told interviewers he cast a blank ballot because he did not know who to vote for. Investigators also claimed Soto had lied about being a citizen once before, in ۱۹۹۲, when he was trying to re-enter the country from Mexico.
Another person who was charged, Jose Probitsado Amaro, has been a legal permanent resident since ۱۹۹۳, according to court documents. He told investigators he could not recall registering to vote, but acknowledged receiving a ballot in ۲۰۲۴ (California automatically sends every registered voter a mail-in ballot).
“With what was going on in California and the economy, he decided to fill it out and sign it. He confirmed it was not with bad intention. He said if he was guilty, then he admits it. He said he is not a person who lies,” the investigator wrote. “He said he did not intend to defraud anyone.”
Another person charged is a ۶۱-year-old Tongan national who has been a legal permanent resident since ۱۹۶۹. Prosecutors say he registered and voted in ۲۰۲۴ and then applied for citizenship this year. On his application, he said he had never falsely claimed to be a US citizen.
It’s not yet clear how the defendants were registered. California is one of many states that has 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 if the defendants had lawyers, and the federal public defender’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
McCotter sent a letter to election officials on Friday threatening to prosecute any official that tabulated a ballot from a noncitizen. The threat is legally specious, experts say, and a blatant effort to intimidate officials. When a reporter asked on Monday whether the DoJ planned to investigate rank-and-file election workers, McCotter said that “knowingly” helping someone illegally vote could lead to charges: “This is a very well established legal doctrine – aiding and abetting.”
Some federal efforts to root out alleged noncitizen voters have faltered in other states. Last month, Nevada state officials said DHS had wrongly identified ۱۸۵ people on the state’s voter rolls as noncitizens.
The justice department said Monday that in recent weeks, federal prosecutors have filed charges against a total of ۱۱۲ people across ۲۰ states for alleged registration offenses and illegal voting.
