The Justice Department on Monday charged 28 people in California with fraudulently registering to vote and casting illegal ballots, escalating a dispute with the state over voter rolls less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.3,4,7
The Justice Department said all of those charged are lawful permanent residents, not U.S. citizens, and that they face charges including making false statements on a naturalization application and submitting fraudulent voter registrations. The department said 11 of them were in custody. The Associated Press, in a report carried by PBS NewsHour, said more than two dozen people had been arrested, while The Guardian and The Hill put the number in custody at 11 of the 28 charged. The sweep was dubbed Operation Protect the Vote.3,4,7
The arrests follow a lawsuit the department filed last Thursday against California. The department said the state was mailing ballots to more than 20,000 people who are likely noncitizens, and it asked a court to stop those ballots from being counted. The dispute began when California officials did not meet a 48-hour deadline to review a password-protected thumb drive that contained a list of 20,000 names, according to PBS NewsHour. The state mails ballots to all registered voters.1,5,7
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber questioned the data and said federal officials had provided no evidence to support their claims. In a statement, she said the Justice Department's "relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections." Weber also described the allegations as "vague and unsubstantiated."1,3,5,7
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said the lawsuit was an attempt to interfere with the election. "This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day," Newsom said. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said on social media that "The Trump Admin's last-minute demands are meritless, and we look forward to making our case in court."5,6
On Monday, the department filed a motion for a temporary restraining order in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. It asks officials to set aside the ballots from voters the administration has tagged as possible noncitizens. In its filing, the department said California "made clear that it is committed to treating ballots from those likely noncitizens equal to ballots from American citizens." The filing also argued that "Once illegally cast ballots are counted and commingled with lawful votes, the resulting harm may be impossible to remedy." California had earlier declined a request to confirm the voters' eligibility or set the ballots aside.5
The department's pressure has also reached election workers. In a Friday letter from Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general, sent to the Los Angeles County Counsel's office and copied to Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan, the department warned that officials who knowingly process ballots cast by noncitizens could face investigation. "If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime," the letter said. Logan said his office was focused on running a fair and secure election. "The U.S. Department of Justice has chosen to litigate their unverified assertions of voting eligibility. At this point, it is best for this to be addressed in court," he said.7
Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told 60 Minutes that "Noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections. So the question is simply how many of them there are." The administration has alleged, without providing evidence, that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote. A White House spokesperson has said that noncitizens "continue to register and vote in federal elections." The administration says access to voter rolls would help remove noncitizens from the lists.1
The dispute over voter data goes back to last year, when the Justice Department asked nearly every state for full voter rolls, including confidential information. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican whose office oversees the state's elections, said the requests included "social security numbers, full dates of birth, driver's license numbers." She said she was not given good answers about why the federal government wanted the information and refused to turn it over. Officials in 29 other states, both Democratic and Republican, also declined, and the department has sued all of them.1
Noncitizen voting does occur, but CBS described it as extremely rare. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said this summer that thousands of noncitizens were mistakenly registered in her state because of a software glitch, and about 340 of them voted. CBS reported that the department has charged more than 100 noncitizens with illegal voting since the start of Mr. Trump's second term. Henderson said her review found 52 questionable voters among more than 2 million registered in Utah. DHS Secretary Mullin said this summer that election officials who knowingly allow noncitizens to vote could be prosecuted or sent to prison. Henderson rejected that idea. "We're not going to prison. No. It's silly," she said. Last month, the department told her in writing that she was under investigation.1,7
Earlier this year, armed federal agents seized ballots from a facility in Fulton County, Georgia, under a criminal search warrant. Georgia's secretary of state described the warrant as full of "baseless and repackaged claims." Agents packed more than 600 boxes of election records from the 2020 election, which President Trump has repeatedly claimed he won. Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett, a Democrat, said, "In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that we would be raided by the FBI." She said she did not know where the ballots were now and described the seizure as "political theater aimed at undermining the 2026 and 2028 elections."1
The California case is set to move quickly, with Election Day 18 days away when Logan spoke. No ruling on the department's request for a temporary restraining order had been reported as of Monday's coverage. Henderson, who has said the losing candidates' refusal to concede is a worry, said that "Candidates who lose can do so much good by graciously conceding. That will instill confidence in the public."1,5,7