The Justice Department Says 20,000 Noncitizens Are on California’s Voter Rolls. It Has Charged 28.
In July the number was 190,000. Last week it was 20,000. Now the DOJ wants a federal judge to freeze every one of those ballots, 15 days before the midterms.
By Mike Dean,
By Daily Rumble | October 20, 2026
Federal agents arrested 11 green card holders across California on Monday morning, and the Justice Department announced charges against 28 in all under a sweep it calls “Operation Protect the Vote.” Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told reporters in Los Angeles that every defendant appears on the department’s list of more than 20,000 “likely noncitizen” registrants, the same list California officials refused to act on last week. The same day, the department filed an emergency motion asking a federal court in Los Angeles to stop the state from counting mail ballots from everyone on that list. Twenty-eight people charged out of 20,000 names is about one in 700, and the government is asking a judge to treat the other 699 as presumed guilty while Californians are already voting.
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Look at how the number has moved. In July, federal officials said California might have as many as 190,000 noncitizens on its rolls. When Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office asked for proof, it told MyNewsLA, “they refused and provided California with nothing.” Last week the figure was 20,000, delivered to Los Angeles County on a thumb drive with a 48-hour deadline. On Monday it was 28 criminal cases. And not all 28 are accused of voting. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli conceded as much, according to CBS News.
So the question is simple. If the government’s own prosecutors could build cases against 28 people on a list of 20,000, what exactly is the evidence against the rest, and why should their ballots be set aside before anyone sees it?
A list that keeps shrinking
The Justice Department says it built the list by matching public voter roll data against Department of Homeland Security immigration records, then removing naturalized citizens, dead voters and people who got citizenship through a parent, according to Courthouse News. McCotter defended the method on Monday. “We think it’s pretty solid,” he said.
California has heard “solid” before. Weber, in a three-page letter reported by Al Jazeera, said the department was demanding “unprecedented measures” based on “unverifiable information or methodology.” The DOJ’s own filings have not settled on a number. Its lawsuit, filed Thursday, Oct. 15, said “tens of thousands.” Its letters said about 20,000. Its July warning said as many as 190,000. A number that falls by about 90 percent in three months is not a measurement. It is a negotiating position.
Al Jazeera also noted that the federal SAVE immigration database, which the administration has leaned on in its voter roll fights, has been found in reporting to flag citizens as noncitizens. That matters. The department says it screened out naturalized citizens, but a screen is only as good as the records behind it, and California has not been allowed to test them.
Do the math the DOJ won’t
California has more than 23 million registered voters. A spokesperson for Attorney General Rob Bonta, Walter Garcia, told Courthouse News that the 28 charged represent about 0.0001 percent of them, and called the case “not evidence of widespread voter fraud.” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office put the national picture in one line on X: the administration “has only charged 113 people across 20 states.”
The department frames 113 as proof of a crackdown, and compares it with 13 voter fraud cases over the entire Biden administration, according to Courthouse News. Read that comparison again. Even after a nationwide push that has sued every state refusing to hand over its voter rolls, the total is a rounding error against the roughly 278,000 noncitizen registrants the administration has claimed exist, a figure CBS News’ 60 Minutes reported came without evidence.
Other states keep finding the same thing. Utah’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson searched her own rolls and found 52 questionable voters among more than 2 million, she told 60 Minutes. She refused to hand her state’s voter data to the Justice Department, and she says the department then told her she was under investigation. Her description of where threats to elections now come from: “from within our own government.”
What’s actually happening beneath the surface
Watch the sequence rather than the press conference. Tuesday, Oct. 13: letters with a 48-hour deadline. Thursday: a lawsuit. Monday: arrests and a press conference, followed within hours by an emergency motion. Each step makes the next one look like a response to a crisis the department itself declared. McCotter said California never answered when federal officials asked for help over the summer. “We never heard anything back,” he said. What he did not say is that a state is not required to purge voters on the strength of a list it has never been allowed to check.
The arrests do real work in court. Prosecutors can now tell a judge that the list is accurate because 28 people on it were charged. But charges are accusations, as the department’s own press release says, and 28 confirmed hits would not validate the other 19,972 names even if every case ends in a conviction. Essayli insists the list reflects noncitizens confirmed through federal databases and says California is free to check the data, MyNewsLA reported. Weber’s office says no list was ever sent to her, only to county officials, and Los Angeles County declined to plug in a thumb drive it did not consider secure.
Meanwhile the message reaches voters who did nothing wrong. Weber said the federal effort will “fuel public distrust in our elections.” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the arrests “voter intimidation” and urged residents to vote anyway, MyNewsLA reported. If you are a naturalized citizen in Los Angeles and you just watched the Justice Department announce arrests of green card holders at a press conference, you have to decide whether your name is on a list nobody will show you.
What to watch
The emergency motion is the whole game. No hearing had been set as of Monday night, and the judge has not been publicly named. If a court orders California to segregate 20,000 ballots without testing the list first, every other state the department is suing will get the same treatment before Nov. 3. Watch, too, for the rest of the 28 cases. Seventeen defendants had not been arrested as of Monday, and the charges range from felony false statements to misdemeanors that carry up to a year.
Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the department’s Civil Rights Division, told 60 Minutes that any noncitizen vote would be challenged one at a time, not by tossing an election. That is the right standard. Hold the department to it. A case against one person can be tested in a courtroom. A list of 20,000 names on a thumb drive cannot, and that is exactly why it should not decide whose vote counts.
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Sources:
U.S. Department of Justice — Justice Department Charges 28 Foreign Nationals in California for Election Crimes — https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-charges-28-foreign-nationals-california-election-crimes
CBS News Los Angeles — 11 green card holders arrested in California for allegedly registering to vote illegally — https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/11-green-card-holders-arrested-california-allegedly-registering-vote-illegally/
Courthouse News Service — DOJ charges 28 in California voter fraud sweep amid escalating battle over voter rolls — https://www.courthousenews.com/doj-charges-28-in-california-voter-fraud-sweep-amid-escalating-battle-over-voter-rolls/
Al Jazeera — Trump administration sues California over noncitizens on voter rolls — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/trump-administration-sues-california-over-noncitizens-on-voter-rolls
CBS News (60 Minutes) — Federal actions around voting system expand weeks ahead of midterms — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-election-investigations-faith-in-voting-60-minutes/
MyNewsLA — DOJ Asks LA Court to Stop State From Counting Suspected Ineligible Ballots — https://mynewsla.com/government/2026/10/19/doj-asks-la-court-to-stop-state-from-counting-suspected-ineligible-ballots-2/