DOJ charges 28 California green-card holders with voting crimes

Where the cases are: Thirteen defendants are in the Central District, which includes Los Angeles; six in the Eastern District, including Sacramento and Fresno County; five in the Northern District; and four in the Southern District, which includes San Diego, the Sacramento Bee reported. DOJ calls the effort "Operation Protect the Vote." The alleged registrations date back as far as 2002, and one alleged vote came in the June 2026 primary.

Primary document: "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," Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said in the DOJ release. The release also says: "A complaint, indictment, and information merely contain accusations. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty."

California's response: Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) said last week that DOJ gave her office 48 hours to act on a list it had not sent her, and that Los Angeles County received it on a thumb drive with the password on a sticky note. She said DOJ refused her requests for its methodology and data sources. Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer for voting-rights groups and San Francisco and Santa Clara, said DOJ was using "the same flawed target lists" to "intimidate people two weeks before election day."

In court: At a hearing in Oakland on Monday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín signaled she was unlikely to block federal investigators under the Administrative Procedure Act but took the plaintiffs' Voting Rights Act claims under submission, Courthouse News reported. A DOJ lawyer argued any intimidation would be at most "ancillary."

Weak spot (California officials): Weber called the federal claims unsubstantiated and declined to review the list. The new complaints allege specific false citizenship claims, under oath, by 28 people on that list.

Weak spot (DOJ): Twenty-eight cases are about 0.14% of the 20,000 names. The charges do not show how accurate the rest of the list is, and DOJ still has not publicly explained how it was built.

What's still unknown: How many people on the list are actually noncitizens, how many were mailed ballots this year, and whether a court will order those ballots set aside before counting.

Charges are allegations; defendants are presumed innocent. US Brief does not name individual defendants. Sourcing mixes the DOJ release and California's statement (both primary, each one side's view) with Sacramento Bee, Courthouse News, AP and NPR reporting.