{"id":507536,"date":"2026-10-25T14:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/507536\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T14:20:09","slug":"la-prosecutor-warns-noncitizens-may-be-voting-as-california-ballot-fight-heads-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/507536\/","title":{"rendered":"LA prosecutor warns noncitizens may be voting as California ballot fight heads to court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles\u2019 top federal prosecutor fears noncitizens could be illegally casting ballots<\/a> in California as dozens of polling places opened across LA County Saturday, warning the state could be trying to run out the clock before disputed votes are counted.<\/p>\n

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli told The California Post it\u2019s \u201cvery highly likely\u201d noncitizens have already voted, as the Justice Department fights to have California set aside ballots tied to more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli told the California Post that it\u2019s \u201cvery highly likely\u201d that noncitizens have begun voting in California elections. Carlin Stiehl for CA Post<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at California\u2019s own papers, they said they\u2019ve already processed over 300,000 ballots just for LA County. So this is going on as we speak,\u201d Essayli said, warning that more disputed ballots could be cast as the lawsuit plays out in court.<\/p>\n

Essayli and US Attorney General Todd Blanche are leading the Justice Department\u2019s push for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to force California to set aside the disputed ballots<\/a> and verify voters\u2019 citizenship before counting them.<\/p>\n

The battle centers on a list of more than 20,000 people that California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan did not review within the department\u2019s requested timeframe.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, early in-person voting for the Nov. 3 election began at 123 vote centers across LA County. CHRIS TORRES\/EPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

As the federal and state officials battle in court, with oral arguments set for Sunday, Essayli worried that California\u2019s continued efforts to fight the DOJ\u2019s order will lead to untold illegal votes being tallied.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest fear is they\u2019re just going to try to run out the clock until all the ballots have been processed, in which case there will be nothing we\u2019ll be able to do after the election,\u201d Essayli said, citing recent state election results with razor-thin margins. \u201cOnce they count the ballots, there\u2019s no way to go back and undo that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, early in-person voting for the Nov. 3 election<\/a> began at 123 vote centers across LA County, with hundreds of additional locations scheduled to open next weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you vote in person, it\u2019s even more concerning because that ballot is processed instantly,\u201d Essayli noted of potential noncitizen ballots being cast.<\/p>\n

Omar Alexander Mu\u00f1oz, 72, a Belizean national charged with voter fraud, is booked at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Monday. Carlin Stiehl for CA Post<\/p>\n

Only days earlier, federal agents arrested 28 alleged illegal voters<\/a> in a sprawling operation that netted targets across California, drawn from the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens.<\/p>\n

They were charged with fraudulently registering to vote in US elections, in which most of them allegedly cast illegal ballots. Authorities called it the biggest such takedown in the state\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of them were registered to vote and some of them voted in multiple elections. So this is not a theory,\u201d Essayli said.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor wondered why any state leaders would fight the Justice Department\u2019s efforts, saying opponents have dismissed claims of any illegal voters as representing only a \u201csmall percentage\u201d of scofflaws.<\/p>\n

Bill Essayli at a bust on Skid Row. Carlin Stiehl for CA Post<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what percentage is acceptable? I\u2019d like to know from California,\u201d Essayli said.<\/p>\n

Before launching its lawsuit, the Justice Department supplied LA County with a password-protected thumb drive identifying the suspected noncitizens who were sent mail-in ballots, according to letters sent last week to Weber and Dean Logan.<\/p>\n

Logan said at the time that he didn\u2019t consider the drive a secure device and hadn\u2019t accessed any files.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are they afraid of? Why are they refusing to work with us to figure this out?\u201d Essayli said. \u201cIf they\u2019re so confident that their records are so good and noncitizens aren\u2019t voting, then they should have nothing to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles\u2019 top federal prosecutor fears noncitizens could be illegally casting ballots in California as dozens of polling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,48,52,51,47,50,49,4182,13,3586,26296,1710],"class_list":["post-507536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-metro","tag-politics","tag-us-news","tag-voter-fraud","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507536","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=507536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}