{"id":499998,"date":"2026-10-18T08:38:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T08:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/499998\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T08:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T08:38:26","slug":"trump-admin-claims-it-confirmed-20000-california-voters-are-noncitizens-it-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/499998\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump admin. claims it confirmed 20,000 California voters are noncitizens. It didn\u2019t\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

In public statements, the Trump administration \u2014 including a top federal prosecutor helping to bring the case \u2014 misrepresented central allegations in its lawsuit<\/a>* seeking to bar California from counting ballots from tens of thousands of voters in the midterms.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) falsely claimed Friday that the federal government confirmed that the roughly 20,000 voters challenged in the new suit are, in fact, noncitizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In court, however, the federal government has said only that it suspects that the voters in question are noncitizens \u2014 but that it has not confirmed that\u2019s true, and doesn\u2019t have time to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 20k represents the number of noncitizens confirmed by a review of federal databases,\u201d Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, whose name is on DOJ\u2019s complaint against California, wrote on social media<\/a> Friday.<\/p>\n

And in a post<\/a> of its own Friday, DHS said it had \u201cmanually verified\u201d that the voters were noncitizens by reviewing California\u2019s voter registration records, adding that it had \u201ccompleted verification\u201d of the names.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The department was responding to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration policy expert who had accused<\/a> Essayli of misconstruing the facts of the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

But the lawsuit filed by DOJ Thursday against California and Los Angeles County<\/a> said only that\u00a0DHS \u201cbelieves\u201d the 20,000 are \u201clikely\u201d noncitizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals,\u201d the lawsuit added.<\/p>\n

Though the federal government said it could not confirm their citizenships before Election Day, it expected California and Los Angeles to confirm the citizenship of all 20,000 voters in 48 hours<\/a> or face a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) and other state officials have strongly disputed the reliability of the Trump administration\u2019s 20,000 figure and have criticized the DOJ for failing to detail the underlying methodology or data behind its claims.<\/p>\n

In the suit, DOJ said DHS\u2019s subagencies identified the 20,000 people it believes are registered to vote in California by manually comparing the state\u2019s public voter roll to immigration and naturalization records.<\/p>\n

However, when DHS used this process against other states \u2014 such as Nevada<\/a> \u2014 it has proven to be highly inaccurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other DHS initiatives to identify noncitizens on voter rolls have also routinely falsely flagged<\/a> naturalized citizens as noncitizens. California has the highest proportion<\/a> of naturalized citizens among U.S. states, with naturalized citizens making up roughly 15.2% of its total population.<\/p>\n

Though none of the voters on the list are confirmed noncitizens, the DOJ Friday told<\/a> California and Los Angeles election officials they risk \u201ccriminal exposure\u201d if they count ballots cast by those individuals.<\/p>\n

*The Elias Law Group (ELG) is representing pro-voting groups who have asked the court to be added as intervenor-defendants to DOJ\u2019s lawsuit against California. ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In public statements, the Trump administration \u2014 including a top federal prosecutor helping to bring the case \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-499998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}