Justice Department charges 28 California green card holders with illegal voting as arrests begin

Federal agents fanned out across California on Monday and took 11 people into custody in a voting fraud case that now covers 28 green card holders. Prosecutors say all of them signed up to vote even though they are not citizens. Most are accused of casting ballots too. The charges land just 15 days before the Nov. 3 election and in the middle of a court fight over whether the state must set aside thousands of mail ballots.

Who was charged

Every defendant is a lawful permanent resident. That status lets a person live and work in the country for good, but it does not come with the right to vote in federal or state elections. The people charged live in cities from Los Angeles County up to Sacramento. Prosecutors say more than 20 of them voted in at least one election, some as recently as the June primary. Five are accused of registering without voting. One is accused of filing a provisional ballot in 2020.

The counts vary from person to person. Lying on a naturalization application and fraudulent voter registration are felonies that each carry up to five years in federal prison. Some defendants also face a misdemeanor count of voting in a federal election as a noncitizen, which carries up to a year. Prosecutors say many of them later applied to become citizens and swore on those forms that they had never claimed citizenship or voted. The 11 people arrested were due before federal judges Monday afternoon. No pleas were entered, more arrests were expected and it was not clear whether the defendants had lawyers yet.

The sweep and the list

Federal officials call the effort Operation Protect the Vote. It pulled in all four U.S. attorney's offices in California along with Homeland Security Investigations agents. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said every one of the 28 appears on a list of more than 20,000 likely noncitizen registrants that federal officials handed to California last week. "Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen," he said.

California would not set those ballots aside, so the federal government sued. On Monday prosecutors asked the judge hearing that case in Los Angeles to order state officials to keep the questioned ballots apart from the rest. McCotter conceded the list may not be perfect. "There may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens," he said. He called 190,000 the ceiling and 20,000 the floor, the group officials feel most sure about.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, warned that state and county election workers could face criminal charges if they knowingly count ballots from noncitizens after being told who they are. McCotter said anyone who knowingly helps a person vote illegally could be charged with aiding and abetting.

Court papers point to confusion

Sworn statements filed in the cases suggest some of the defendants did not grasp the rules. One man who has held a green card since 1976 told investigators that canvassers outside a supermarket helped him register. He said poll workers told him it was fine to vote because his ballot would be checked. He said he turned in a blank ballot because he did not know whom to pick. Investigators say he also falsely claimed citizenship once before, in 1992, while trying to get back into the country from Mexico.

Another man, a permanent resident since 1993, said he did not remember registering but did get a mail ballot in 2024 and filled it out. He told investigators he meant no harm. California mails a ballot to every registered voter and registers people automatically when they visit the DMV unless they decline. How the defendants ended up on the rolls was still unclear.

California pushes back

State leaders say the case is a scare tactic. Secretary of State Shirley Weber has called the federal demands outrageous. She points out that homeland security officials first claimed in July that more than 190,000 California voters might be noncitizens before cutting that figure to about 20,000 without sharing how they got either number. Weber says treating everyone on the list as ineligible until they prove otherwise would break a federal law that bars mass removals from voter rolls in the run-up to a federal election.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that the request to toss ballots "should scare the hell out of every American." Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn called Monday's arrests "voter intimidation and a blatant attempt to undermine trust in our midterm elections."

How rare it is

Election experts say noncitizen voting is extremely rare. The 28 cases are a tiny slice of California's 23.1 million registered voters. More than 9.4 million Californians voted in the June primary alone. A similar push in Nevada fell apart last month after state officials checked the 185 names homeland security officials sent them and found every one was a U.S. citizen.

Federal prosecutors say they have charged more than 110 people in 20 states with illegal voting or registration in recent weeks. Californians are choosing a new governor next month and deciding 14 statewide ballot measures along with several close House races that could help decide control of Congress.