Justice Department Gives California 48 Hours to Review List of Alleged Noncitizens Sent Mail Ballots

Since California began mailing ballots to every registered voter on Oct. 5, the Justice Department has moved from subpoenas and prosecutions to a direct demand on the state's election machinery.

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter sent letters to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. The letters give them 48 hours, until noon Thursday, Oct. 15, to review a list of people the federal government "believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot."

The names were delivered to Los Angeles County officials on a password-protected thumb drive. The Justice Department has not made the list public.

What the letters demand

McCotter asked officials to check whether any citizens appear on the list. For anyone whose citizenship they cannot independently confirm, he asked them to "segregate — not cancel" the person's vote-by-mail ballot until status is determined.

The letters go further. Listed voters who have not yet been sent a ballot should not get one until citizenship is verified. Ballots already returned by listed voters should not be counted until then.

If California does not comply, the department says it "will have no choice but to seek emergency relief." No court filing has been announced.

"Allowing noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes," McCotter wrote. He added that states run voter registration while the federal government maintains the immigration records needed to verify citizenship.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the request "should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: only American citizens may vote in federal elections."

The objections

Election law experts say the timing is the problem. David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, asked why the department would "violate its own rules about investigating elections close to election day, and over a week after they knew the state had already mailed ballots out." He also pointed to what he called past federal claims "full of errors."

The Los Angeles Times reports that similar Trump administration lists in other states have proven substantially inaccurate and included many people who are citizens. That is the core of the dispute: the federal government says the people on this list are likely noncitizens, and no one outside the government has seen the names or the method used to compile them.

Weber has already pushed back on the administration's numbers. She questioned the basis for a July claim by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that more than 190,000 noncitizens might be on California's rolls. She also turned down administration offers to help purge ineligible voters without more information on how those conclusions were reached. Neither Weber's office nor Logan's office had responded publicly to the new letters as of Wednesday.

California's mail-ballot system is also part of the argument. Because every registered voter receives a ballot automatically, the Justice Department's letter says, noncitizens on the rolls "automatically received ballots per California law."

The enforcement push around it

The California demand is one piece of a wider campaign. Election officials in Georgia, Connecticut, Nevada and Washington state say they have received federal subpoenas for election records in recent months. Los Angeles County has said it received federal grand jury subpoenas seeking voter registration information on dozens of individuals the administration suspects are not citizens.

On the prosecution side, the department told Fox News Digital it has charged 64 foreign nationals in 17 states with unlawful voting, fraudulent registration and related offenses over roughly the last five weeks. Minnesota has 11 defendants, Pennsylvania 10 and Texas nine. California has four. The department says it has charged 104 people with voting-fraud-related offenses since Trump returned to office in 2025.

On Oct. 12 the department announced charges against more than a dozen more people, most described in court filings as lawful permanent residents or other noncitizens, accused of voting in at least one election. Among them is Staciann Pollion Davis, 42, of Jamaica. An FBI agent's affidavit says she told investigators she was not a citizen but voted in 2022 and 2024. These are allegations in charging documents, not convictions.

In some cases the department has secured guilty pleas. Evelyn Miller of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, a Filipino national, pleaded guilty to illegally voting in the 2024 presidential election. She faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Voting experts quoted by NBC News describe noncitizen voting as relatively rare. The department cites Iowa's 2nd Congressional District race in 2020, decided by six votes, to argue that even a few illegal ballots can matter. A DOJ spokesperson said the department will enforce the law "whether a case involves one illegal ballot or hundreds."

Voting as a noncitizen in a federal election carries up to one year in prison. Falsely claiming citizenship to register or vote carries up to five years.

What happens next

The deadline falls at noon Thursday. If Weber and Logan do not act on the list, the Justice Department has said it will go to court. A judge would then have to decide whether federal officials can ask a state to hold back ballots from voters on an unreleased list, with the Nov. 3 election less than three weeks away.