DOJ Announces Charges Against 48 Aliens for Illegal Voting and Election Crimes Across Five States, Including California and Nevada

The Justice Department announced Monday that it has charged 48 aliens in Pennsylvania, California, Florida, New York, and Nevada with illegal voting in federal elections, fraudulent voter registration, and related election crimes, including false claims of U.S. citizenship to register or cast ballots. The latest batch of cases forms part of an aggressive federal crackdown that has already produced more than 150 voting-fraud-related charges since the start of the current Trump administration.

The 48 defendants are nationals of more than a dozen countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Philippines, India, Canada, Belize, Poland, Russia, Greece, Cuba, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Italy, and others. The largest concentration of charges and arrests occurred in California, where federal prosecutors brought cases against 28 of the 48 individuals.

🗳️🚨 Today, the Justice Department announced charges involving 48 ALIENS in Pennsylvania, California, Florida, New York, and Nevada in connection with illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration, and related election crimes.

The cases include voting by aliens in federal… pic.twitter.com/LERBDuHeHr

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) October 26, 2026

Last week In California, the department charged 28 lawful permanent residents under Operation Protect the Vote, a coordinated effort by all four of the state’s U.S. Attorney’s Offices. Eleven were arrested. Prosecutors allege the defendants fraudulently registered to vote by claiming citizenship and that most of them cast ballots in one or more federal elections, with at least eight voting more than once.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter was direct about the stakes. “Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” he said. “Each of the 28 defendants charged today appears on the list of more than 20,000 likely noncitizen registrants we provided to California election officials last week. California refused to look at that list. Today’s charges show exactly what that refusal puts at risk. California must verify the citizenship of those more than 20,000 registrants before mail-in ballots are counted.”

The Ninth Circuit ordered California to respond by noon Saturday to the department’s emergency request to set those ballots aside pending verification, as the California Globe reported.

Over the weekend, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli responded to California’s court arguments and the state’s reliance on self-attestation, writing that “California isn’t even pretending noncitizens aren’t voting in their elections anymore. They’re arguing the federal government can’t stop the state from counting their ballots.”

California isn’t even pretending noncitizens aren’t voting in their elections anymore. They’re arguing the federal government can’t stop the state from counting their ballots. https://t.co/NLV3q69JPR

— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) October 26, 2026

In response to former Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s claim that citizenship verification is voter attestation, Essayli remarked, “Attestation is not verification. Ensuring only citizens vote isn’t political, it’s enforcing state and federal law.”

Attestation is not verification. Ensuring only citizens vote isn’t political, it’s enforcing state and federal law. https://t.co/qd7HAzYKm6

— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) October 26, 2026

As previously reported, Los Angeles County Assistant Registrar Monica Flores stated in a sworn court declaration that the Registrar “is not equipped or authorized to verify voter citizenship because it does not independently house citizenship-related information beyond the voter attestation as identified in federal and state law (such as, among other things, immigration records, travel records, naturalization records, etc.).” California’s system relies on the registrant’s own sworn attestation—typically a checkbox or certification under penalty of perjury that the person is a U.S. citizen—with election officials accepting that representation and requiring no additional independent verification of citizenship status.

State officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom have dismissed the effort as a political stunt and pointed to the relatively small number of charges relative to the state’s 23 million registered voters.

Federal prosecutors note that the Biden administration charged only about a dozen noncitizen voting and registration cases over four years, while the current Justice Department has brought more than 150 such charges in a matter of months—exposing the prior administration’s near-total refusal to enforce the law.

The Globe has tracked California’s repeated resistance to citizenship verification, including lawsuits over access to voter data and the state’s refusal to require proof of citizenship at registration, as well as parallel cases in Nevada and Arizona involving noncitizen voting and voter ID requirements.

As of October 26, the 48 individuals face federal charges that carry potential prison time. Whether California will sequester the broader set of flagged ballots before they are counted remains the subject of active litigation during early voting and just days before the midterms.