Justice Department targets 28 green-card holders in California and asks court to freeze ballot processing
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
The DOJ says it has filed criminal charges against 28 California green-card holders and sought an emergency court order to block the counting of ballots it labels as possibly cast by noncitizens, drawing sharp objections from state officials who call the move an assault on voting rights.
The U.S. Justice Department on Monday announced charges against 28 green-card holders in California for alleged election-related crimes and filed an emergency request in federal court to stop the state from processing ballots returned by individuals it says are "likely noncitizens." The action immediately raised alarms among voting-rights advocates, who see it as another aggressive attempt to police the ballot box through intimidation and overreach.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told reporters that the department "will not look the other way while noncitizens vote in federal elections" and warned that California and Los Angeles County could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly process such ballots. Critics say the rhetoric is designed to stoke fear and justify a sweeping intervention in election administration.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber responded that the requested measures would violate both federal and state law, describing the withholding of ballots as an "unprecedented suspension — and even denial — of voting rights." Los Angeles County’s assistant counsel Peter Bollinger echoed the concern, stating the actions would disenfranchise voters without due process. Their objections frame the DOJ’s move as a dangerous escalation that places access to the franchise at risk.
All 28 defendants are green-card holders who appeared on a list of 20,000 names the DOJ provided to state officials. Prosecutors say many made false statements on naturalization forms about prior voter registration or citizenship. Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for California’s Central District, said the conduct was intentional, not a bureaucratic error. Even so, civil-liberties advocates argue the government is casting a vast net and treating allegations as proof before cases are tested in court.
The DOJ has charged 113 noncitizens across 20 states in the past seven weeks. UCLA election-law expert Rick Hasen noted that, given California’s more than 20 million registered voters, the number of allegations represents a very small fraction and may overstate the scope of noncitizen voting. That context underscores how limited the alleged problem appears when set against the scale of the electorate.
State officials argue that the Justice Department’s request is contrary to the National Voter Registration Act, which limits voter-roll purges close to an election, and that the methodology used to identify the 20,000 individuals has not been disclosed. Several voting-rights groups have filed to intervene in the case, contending that the lawsuit is more political than legal in nature, and that the attempt to halt ballot processing risks turning election enforcement into a partisan weapon.