{"id":503221,"date":"2026-10-21T09:12:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/503221\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T09:12:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:12:24","slug":"feds-claim-17000-other-potential-noncitizen-voters-in-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/503221\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds claim 17,000 other potential noncitizen voters in California"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Federal authorities this week teased a \u201cseparate batch\u201d of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters in their federal court challenge to California\u2019s handling of alleged voter fraud.<\/p>\n

In response, Los Angeles County officials questioned the accuracy of the government\u2019s earlier list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters<\/a> \u2014 saying a preliminary review of a subset of those voters found evidence that nearly 40% were born in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The claims came in filings shedding new light on the unprecedented Homeland Security inquiry into California\u2019s voter rolls just weeks before the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Nicolas Bartell, a Homeland Security official, wrote in a sworn affidavit that \u2014 in addition to developing the disputed list of 20,000 \u201clikely noncitizen\u201d voters at the heart of the litigation \u2014 his agency has also developed a \u201cseparate batch of more than 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur review is ongoing as USCIS receives records on a rolling basis before the election date,\u201d wrote Bartell, the associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Monica Flores, a top official in the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder\/County Clerk\u2019s office, wrote in an affidavit that staff members had reviewed a sample of 200 registrations from the list of 20,000 voters whom the Justice Department alleged last week were \u201clikely noncitizens.\u201d The office found that more than half \u2014 112 \u2014 had been canceled or were inactive, meaning no ballot was sent to those voters.<\/p>\n

In instances where those voters\u2019 birthplace was \u201cmeaningfully reported, 38.9% indicate that they were born in the United States, which is strong evidence of citizenship,\u201d Flores wrote, while 71.2% showed no record of ever voting.<\/p>\n

Flores wrote that similarly vetting the citizenship of thousands of additional voters before the election would not only be \u201cadministratively impossible and take key personnel away from their critical election duties,\u201d but would also \u201crisk disenfranchising voters who are validly registered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also Tuesday, Rachel Evans, an attorney in the California secretary of state\u2019s office, wrote in an affidavit that the office since August has received and been complying with grand jury subpoenas for the detailed voter records of about 300 people.<\/p>\n

Evans\u2019 acknowledgment came a day after federal prosecutors charged 28 people<\/a> across California with federal election-related crimes, including fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application, and suggests federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal cases against hundreds more.<\/p>\n

Taken together, the filings indicate that the legal battle between the Trump administration and California over alleged fraudulent voting is only just gearing up \u2014 with no end in sight before Nov. 3 \u2014 as is the political sparring over the issue.<\/p>\n

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted to X on Tuesday that Flores\u2019 acknowledgment that her office could not possibly vet voters\u2019 citizenship before the election was a \u201cmassive concession,\u201d proving the federal government\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s office said that \u201cany credible allegation of voter fraud should be taken seriously and investigated,\u201d but that federal officials charging just 28 people in a state with 23 million voters showed they have no evidence of widespread fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, non-citizen voter registration and voting does happen in isolated instances \u2014 in California and the rest of the country alike \u2014 but it is so rare that the Trump admin is parading around town about .0001% of California voters,\u201d Newsom\u2019s office wrote on X.<\/p>\n

The broader case<\/p>\n

On Monday, Justice Department lawyers filed a request for an emergency restraining order requiring state election officials to segregate any ballots from the 20,000 voters flagged on the initial Homeland Security list until their citizenship is proved. They argued the state is violating the law \u2014 and harming the federal government \u2014 by refusing to do so.<\/p>\n

State attorneys argued Tuesday that the federal government has no authority over California elections and seeks to violate federal law precluding voter roll purges in the 90 days before an election.<\/p>\n

State officials wrote that the Justice Department appeared to have \u201cindividualized evidence\u201d of noncitizenship for the 28 people it had charged, and that nothing was preventing it from working through existing \u201cstatutory channels\u201d to block those individuals\u2019 ballots. But they argued that it does not have evidence to back its claims against all 20,000 voters whose ballots it is seeking to sequester.<\/p>\n

Those contentions \u2014 and Bartell\u2019s claim of a second list of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters \u2014 only add to an already heated debate about the scope of the inquiry and its legitimacy.<\/p>\n

In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that there \u201cmay be as many as 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California,\u201d and demanded that the state work with federal authorities to investigate. The state asked that Homeland Security first provide more information, including about its methodology for identifying that figure.<\/p>\n

Last week, acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter wrote follow-up letters to Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar\u2019s office, asserting that 20,000 \u201clikely noncitizens\u201d were on state rolls, and again demanding state cooperation within 48 hours to remove them. Weber balked, arguing that federal law precludes systematic roll purges within 90 days of an election to protect eligible voters.<\/p>\n

Weber and other state officials also questioned the drop from 190,000 to 20,000, and the reliability of the federal government\u2019s underlying data and methodology. \u201cWhat happened to the 170,000? You just got those wrong?\u201d California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta asked.<\/p>\n

On Monday, McCotter said the 190,000 figure was \u201cthe ceiling,\u201d inclusive of cases that federal authorities had high, medium and low confidence in, while the 20,000 figure was \u201cthe floor,\u201d inclusive of only high confidence cases.<\/p>\n

Potential flaws in the list have been a major point of contention among California officials, who have pointed to substantial inaccuracies in lists elsewhere, including in Nevada, where a state review found that the 185 voters whose citizenship was questioned by the Trump administration were all citizens.<\/p>\n

Now, it appears the federal government\u2019s disputed list of 20,000 voters won\u2019t be the last in California.<\/p>\n

How voters were identified<\/p>\n

In court filings, federal officials described purchasing California voter registration information before USCIS and Homeland Security Investigations agents worked to identify any voters who are not citizens. They said that they did so in part by comparing the state data with \u201cthird party commercial data\u201d sets and law enforcement data sets, and that they further vetted their list by culling dead people.<\/p>\n

Essayli pointed to those descriptions to dispel arguments that federal authorities have not provided their methodology for identifying potential noncitizens on voter rolls. He said that the federal process was robust and trustworthy and that federal authorities had compiled \u201coverwhelming evidence of tens of thousands of ineligible voters on the state\u2019s rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independent election experts saw it differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey admitted to using some of the same tools amateur election conspiracy theorists use, like unidentified third party software, commercial lists, and public versions of [the state\u2019s] voter roll,\u201d Gowri Ramachandran, an election administration expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. \u201cThese amateur data matching efforts don\u2019t get any better merely because the Department of Justice relies on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf DOJ could prove many more cases, we would have heard about it,\u201d Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote in a blog post. \u201cThey\u2019ve been on an aggressive hunt nationally for such fraud. It\u2019s not surprising they\u2019ve found little because it is a small problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal authorities this week teased a \u201cseparate batch\u201d of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters in their federal court challenge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,18940,204,21599,405,721,3164,194715,346,194716,592,225,68,1522,430],"class_list":["post-503221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-citizenship","tag-election","tag-federal-authority","tag-government","tag-law","tag-list","tag-monica-flores","tag-office","tag-other-potential-noncitizen-voter","tag-people","tag-state","tag-tuesday","tag-voter","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503221","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=503221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}