Key facts
- Bill Essayli said five of the six defendants had been arrested and that the charges followed complaints by Department of Homeland Security agents.
- Prosecutors said the six defendants came from Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Canada and Iran and each faces one count of making false statements on a naturalization application.
- Each charge carries a maximum of five years in prison, according to prosecutors; the defendants have not been formally indicted.
- Essayli said the government used third-party databases to identify potentially fraudulent voters and that the list may not be 100% accurate.
- An immigrants' rights group said in a weekend filing that more than 40% of the flagged people could not be found on state voter rolls.
- The roughly 20,000 flagged names represent a tiny fraction of California's more than 23 million registered voters.
The US Department of Justice charged six more people in California with alleged voter fraud crimes, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, said at a press conference on Monday. All six are green card holders, according to criminal complaints filed in federal court, meaning they are immigrants with legal status who are barred from voting.
The six defendants include people originally from Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Canada and Iran, prosecutors said. Each faces a single charge of making false statements on a naturalization application, with affidavits alleging they unlawfully registered to vote and later falsely claimed they had never registered. The complaints say the defendants cast ballots in recent years, but they are not facing charges specifically relating to fraudulently voting. Each charge carries a maximum of five years in prison, according to prosecutors.
Five of the six have been arrested, Essayli said. The charges were outlined in initial complaints written by Department of Homeland Security agents. The defendants have not been formally indicted, and it was not immediately clear if any had obtained lawyers. The federal public defender's office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
One 52-year-old defendant from Canada was accused of voting unlawfully twice and then seeking to cancel his registration; the complaint says he has been in the US for more than 40 years. A 43-year-old defendant from the Philippines has been in the US since 1992 and was accused of voting several times since 2020.
The DoJ filed similar charges against 28 people across California last month and arranged an on-camera arrest of a 72-year-old defendant, editing the footage into a DoJ promotional video. The Associated Press and other news outlets were present for a pre-dawn arrest of the 72-year-old last month, and a Fox News reporter on Monday posted photos of two arrests.
The latest charges come as the DoJ pursues a lawsuit seeking to force California election officials to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots that federal prosecutors say may belong to noncitizens who fraudulently registered. State election leaders have said the prosecutors' list and methodology were unreliable and that complying mid-election would be logistically impossible and risk disenfranchising US citizens. Multiple judges have rebuffed the DoJ's efforts, and the US Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's appeals.