This week, federal authorities revealed a “distinct set” of 17,000 prospective noncitizen voters in their ongoing federal court case regarding California’s management of suspected voter fraud.
In reaction, officials from Los Angeles County expressed doubts about the accuracy of the government’s previous list of 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters, noting that an initial examination of a sample from that group indicated that nearly 40% were actually born in the U.S.
The allegations emerged in documents that provide new insights into the unprecedented inquiry from Homeland Security into California’s voter registration records, occurring just weeks ahead of the election on Nov. 3.
In a sworn affidavit filed on Monday, Nicolas Bartell, a Homeland Security official, stated that besides the contentious list of 20,000 “likely noncitizen” voters central to the case, his agency has compiled a “separate set of more than 17,000 voting records possibly associated with noncitizens.”
“Our review remains ongoing as USCIS continuously receives records ahead of the election date,” wrote Bartell, who serves as the associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
On Tuesday, Monica Flores, a senior figure in the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, noted in an affidavit that her team evaluated a sample of 200 registrations from the Justice Department’s list of 20,000 voters identified as “likely noncitizens.” The review found that more than half — 112 individuals — had been canceled or classified as inactive, meaning they would not receive ballots.
For those voters where their birthplace was “meaningfully reported,” 38.9% indicated they were born in the United States, signaling strong evidence of citizenship, Flores indicated, and 71.2% had no record of ever voting.
Flores stated that evaluating the citizenship status of thousands more voters prior to the election would be “administratively impossible and divert crucial personnel from their essential election duties,” and also “risk disenfranchising legitimate voters.”
Additionally on Tuesday, Rachel Evans, an attorney in the California Secretary of State’s office, confirmed in an affidavit that the office has been complying with grand jury subpoenas for detailed voter records concerning around 300 individuals since August.
Evans’ confirmation followed the recent announcement that federal prosecutors charged 28 individuals across California with election-related federal offenses, including fraudulent voter registration and providing false statements in naturalization applications, suggesting that prosecutors are pursuing criminal cases against hundreds more.
These developments signal that the legal confrontation between the Trump administration and California over claims of election fraud is intensifying — with no resolution anticipated before Nov. 3 — alongside the political disputes surrounding the situation.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, remarked on X that Flores’ admission regarding her office’s inability to verify voters’ citizenship before the election represents a “significant concession,” supporting the federal government’s case.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office stated that “any credible claim of voter fraud should be taken seriously and investigated,” but noted that federal officials charging only 28 individuals in a state with 23 million voters indicates they lack evidence of widespread fraud.
“While isolated instances of non-citizen voter registration and voting do occur in California and across the nation, they are exceedingly rare, and the Trump administration’s focus on merely .0001% of California voters is misleading,” Newsom’s office wrote on X.
The broader case
On Monday, Justice Department lawyers submitted a request for an emergency restraining order mandating that state election officials separate any ballots from the 20,000 flagged voters until their citizenship is verified. They argued that the state is infringing on the law — and harming the federal government — by not complying.
On Tuesday, state attorneys countered that the federal government lacks authority over California’s elections and is attempting to violate federal law that prohibits voter roll purges within 90 days leading up to an election.
State officials noted that the Justice Department seemed to possess “individualized evidence” of noncitizenship for the 28 individuals it charged, and that there is nothing preventing the federal government from using existing “statutory channels” to block those individuals’ ballots. However, they argued there is no evidence to substantiate its claims about all 20,000 voters whose ballots it seeks to isolate.
These assertions — combined with Bartell’s claim of an additional list of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters — only exacerbate an already fierce debate regarding the inquiry’s scope and validity.
In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that there could be up to 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California, demanding that the state collaborate with federal authorities in the investigation. The state requested that Homeland Security first provide more details, specifically concerning its methodology for determining that estimate.
Last week, acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent follow-up correspondence to Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar’s office, asserting that 20,000 “likely noncitizens” were on state rolls, again insisting on state cooperation within 48 hours to eliminate them. Weber resisted, arguing that federal law prohibits systematic roll purges within 90 days before an election to safeguard eligible voters.
Weber and other state officials also raised questions about the reduction from 190,000 to 20,000, and the credibility of the federal government’s underlying data and methods. “What happened to the 170,000? Did you just make an error?” California Attorney General Rob Bonta inquired.
On Monday, McCotter clarified that the 190,000 figure represented “the ceiling,” encompassing cases with varying confidence levels, while the 20,000 figure represented “the floor,” containing only those cases with high confidence.
Concerns about the reliability of the list have been a significant point of contention among California officials, who highlighted considerable inaccuracies in other lists, including one from Nevada, where a state review confirmed that all 185 voters flagged by the Trump administration for questioning were indeed citizens.
It now appears that the federal government’s contentious list of 20,000 voters will not be the final word in California.
How voters were identified
In court documents, federal representatives detailed their purchase of California voter registration information, which allowed USCIS and Homeland Security Investigations agents to pinpoint any voters who are not citizens. They stated that this was partly achieved through comparing state data with “third party commercial data” and law enforcement data, and further refining their list by removing deceased individuals.
Essayli referred to these accounts to counter claims that federal authorities have not disclosed their methodology for identifying potential noncitizens on voter rolls. He asserted that the federal process is thorough and reliable, and that federal officials have gathered “overwhelming evidence of tens of thousands of ineligible voters within the state’s rolls.”
Independent election experts have a contrasting viewpoint.
“They acknowledged using methods similar to those employed by amateur election conspiracy theorists, such as undisclosed third-party software, commercial lists, and publicly available versions of [the state’s] voter roll,” noted Gowri Ramachandran, an election administration specialist at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “These amateur data-matching efforts do not gain legitimacy simply because the Department of Justice utilizes them.”
“If DOJ could substantiate many more cases, we would have heard about it,” Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, stated in a blog post. “They’ve been on an aggressive quest nationwide for such fraud. It’s not unexpected that they’ve discovered little, as it remains a minor issue.”
