DOJ Sues California to Set Aside 20,000 Mail Ballots It Says Belong to Likely Noncitizens
Sixteen days before the midterms, the Justice Department wants a federal judge in Los Angeles to hold back ballots from people federal agencies flagged as likely noncitizens. California says the list is unverified. No judge has ruled.
The Overview
The facts, straight
BREAKING / DEVELOPING: This story is developing; details may change. As of the latest docket update (late Saturday, Oct. 17), the court had not ruled or set a hearing. Published Oct. 18, 2026, 8:19 a.m. MT.
The Justice Department sued California on Thursday, Oct. 15, asking a federal court to keep the state from counting mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters whom federal immigration agencies identified as likely noncitizens, at least until their citizenship can be checked.
The case is United States v. State of California, No. 2:26-cv-12025, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. The defendants are the state, Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan, according to the complaint. It asks the court to order California "(1) to set aside vote-by-mail ballots from persons identified by the Federal Government likely to be noncitizens and (2) to independently—or in collaboration with the Federal Government—verify their citizenship status" before counting them.
How it got here, according to the filings:
- July 16: Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to Weber about likely noncitizens on California's rolls. Weber says she asked for the underlying data and methodology and never received it.
- Oct. 1: California mailed ballots to all registered voters, as state law requires, the complaint says.
- Oct. 13: Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter wrote to Weber that the department had given Los Angeles County "a password-protected thumb drive with a list of names of people the Federal Government believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot." He asked the state to "review the list within 48 hours" and to "segregate—not cancel—those individuals' vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined," by "October 15 at noon EST," or "the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief."
- Oct. 14: Logan said his office had not opened the drive "because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols. We do not consider the device a secure medium."
- Oct. 15: Weber answered in writing, and DOJ filed suit the same day.
- Oct. 16: McCotter sent a second letter, to the Los Angeles County Counsel's Office, with copies to Weber and Logan. It warns: "If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime." The letter cites 18 U.S.C. § 611, which bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and 18 U.S.C. § 2, the federal aiding-and-abetting statute. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted the letter on X.
That evening, President Trump (@realDonaldTrump) shared an image of the letter on Truth Social (post). Moments later, at 6:28 p.m. MT, he quoted that post and added: "They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!" (post).
Where the case stands. As of its last update late Saturday, the court docket showed no ruling, no hearing date and no separate emergency motion. The complaint itself asks for a preliminary and permanent injunction. The state has objected to DOJ's notice of a related case, and Logan joined that objection. Two groups of voting and civil rights organizations have moved to intervene on California's side.
A separate lawsuit is moving in Washington. In Trujillo v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:26-cv-03072 (D.D.C.), the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and California voter Pedro Trujillo filed an emergency motion Oct. 15 asking a judge to stop federal officials from using the list to have California withhold or set aside ballots, according to their lawyers at the UCLA Voting Rights Project. Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan has ordered the government to respond to that emergency motion by Oct. 23, with the plaintiffs' reply due Oct. 30, according to the docket. She also gave the plaintiffs until noon Monday, Oct. 19, to respond to the government's motion to reassign that case.
What the Left Says
The progressive and Democratic case
California officials say the list is unproven and the timing is the problem. "This is an emergency of the DOJ's creation," Weber wrote to McCotter. She said the list "lacks both the detail and function to be of any investigative use," and that DOJ had offered no basis for "suspecting—not even confirming with any level of certainty—the listed individuals are non-citizens." She argued that setting the ballots aside would violate federal law, including the National Voter Registration Act's 90-day bar on systematic removals before a federal election.
"The USDOJ's relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states' protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections," Weber said in an Oct. 14 statement. "California has robust state law requirements that only U.S. citizens can register to vote and that any non-eligible registrants are removed from the State's voter rolls."
Gov. Gavin Newsom's office called it an "unfounded lawsuit." "This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day," Newsom said in a statement.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, said in a statement: "This lawsuit has no legal basis or evidence behind it and is nothing more than a blatant abuse of power designed to sow distrust in our elections and threaten Americans' right to vote. … We will fight this illegal overreach every step of the way." After the second letter, he posted on X:
Post: Sen. Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) on X, Oct. 16, 2026.
Los Angeles County's registrar said on X that DOJ "filed a lawsuit without regard for, or acknowledgment of, the County's timely response" (post).
Where Reality Likely Sits
Radio Purple's analysis
Both sides start from the same rule: noncitizens can't vote in federal elections. Federal law says so, and California law says a person "shall not be registered" unless they are a U.S. citizen, as Weber's letter notes. The fight is over two narrower questions: how reliable this list is, and what election officials may do about it with ballots already in voters' hands.
On reliability, the public can't judge yet. The list hasn't been released. DOJ describes a multi-agency review, California says it hasn't been told how the list was built, and the county says it hasn't opened the drive. The closest test so far comes from Nevada. In an Aug. 13 meeting, DHS officials told Nevada they had identified 185 people on its rolls whom, after a manual review, they believed were noncitizens. Nevada's chief deputy attorney general, Greg D. Ott, answered DHS in a Sept. 23 email: "As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens. You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise." He said DHS had given Nevada only voter registration numbers, which can refer to more than one person, without names or birth dates (email, obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal through a records request and posted by Democracy Docket). DHS disputed Nevada's account. "The list of 185 were simply a subset of individuals that had gone through a rigorous manual review process," a DHS statement said, according to the Review-Journal. We found no public DHS document with that statement, so this account relies on the newspaper's reporting. The California list may be different: Essayli says DOJ gave California "the names, addresses, and DOBs of the noncitizens we've identified" (post).
On remedy, DOJ is asking for a hold, not a purge, and says a judge can then sort out who is eligible. California says even a hold denies registered voters their right to have their ballots counted, and that federal law bars this kind of action so close to an election. That is the legal question the court in Los Angeles now has to decide, and quickly.
What would settle this for you: the list made public to a judge, or the state checking names itself? Tell us.
What the Right Says
The conservative and Republican case
The administration says this is about enforcing a federal law that everyone agrees exists. "The law is clear, aliens in the United States cannot vote in federal elections," McCotter said in the department's announcement. "What our complaint alleges is that California is facilitating unlawful voting by knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote. This needs to stop." Attorney General Todd Blanche said: "State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America."
DOJ stresses how narrow its request is. Its Oct. 16 letter says the department "has not requested a purge, cancellation of registrations, or any programmatic action. We requested only temporary ballot segregation pending citizenship verification," which it calls "a standard election-administration practice implemented nationwide." On the NVRA, the letter says the 90-day limit "applies only to systematic list-maintenance programs—not to targeted, individualized evidence of unlawful voting identified by federal law enforcement." The complaint argues that California, once on notice, "cannot induce, encourage, promote, or knowingly facilitate noncitizen voting."
On the list itself, DHS says it compared "publicly available California voter-registration files" with "federal immigration data." Mullin called it a "preliminary analysis" and said "the analysis and review remain ongoing." McCotter's letter says the list was built through "a multilayered, multiagency investigative methodology that relied upon internal immigration records, data matching, supervisory verification procedures, and more."
Essayli explained the request on Fox News, in a clip the Justice Department posted:
Post: U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) on X, Oct. 16, 2026.
"When we're telling them you have 20,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls, you're going to be diluting the votes of American citizens," he said. "All we are asking them to do is sequester the ballots." When the county answered on X by citing federal guidance on list maintenance, Essayli replied: "We didn't ask you to remove them from your list. We asked you to sequester their ballots so a judge can decide whether they may be counted" (post).
Blanche also pushed back at Senate Democrats. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) posted Oct. 15 that "DOJ and the FBI have seized ballots, threatened election officials, and worked with DHS in an attempt to undermine the election administration powers of states." That day, Durbin, Padilla and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote to Blanche asking him to commit that DOJ will not seize ballots or voting equipment before the midterms are certified. Blanche answered on X:
Post: Attorney General Todd Blanche (@AGToddBlanche) on X, Oct. 16, 2026.
Sources & Citations
- U.S. Department of Justice, “Complaint, United States v. State of California, No. 2:26-cv-12025 (C.D. Cal.)”, October 15, 2026.
- CourtListener (PACER/RECAP), “Docket, United States v. State of California, No. 2:26-cv-12025 (C.D. Cal.)”, October 17, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “Justice Department Sues State of California over Voter List”, October 15, 2026.
- U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California, “United States Sues California After Determining More Than 20,000 Likely Noncitizens Are Registered to Vote in the Golden State”, October 15, 2026.
- California Secretary of State, “Letter from Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter to Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber”, October 13, 2026.
- X (@USAttyEssayli), “Letter from Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter to Peter M. Bollinger, Los Angeles County Counsel's Office”, October 16, 2026.
- California Secretary of State, “Letter from Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber to Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter”, October 15, 2026.
- California Secretary of State, “California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D., Issues Statement in Response to U.S. Department of Justice Letter (PR26-127)”, October 14, 2026.
- County of Los Angeles, “Statement from Dean Logan Regarding U.S. Department of Justice Correspondence”, October 14, 2026.
- Office of the Governor of California, “Governor Newsom responds to unfounded Trump lawsuit that is desperate attempt to suppress California voters less than 3 weeks before election”, October 15, 2026.
- Office of Sen. Alex Padilla, “Padilla Statement on Trump's DOJ Lawsuit Against California and Los Angeles Election Officials”, October 15, 2026.
- Office of Sen. Alex Padilla, “Padilla, Durbin, Whitehouse Demand DOJ Commit to Not Seize Ballots, Voting Equipment During Midterm Elections”, October 15, 2026.
- CourtListener (PACER/RECAP), “Docket, Trujillo v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:26-cv-03072 (D.D.C.)”, October 16, 2026.
- UCLA Voting Rights Project (plaintiffs' counsel), “CHIRLA and UCLA Voting Rights Project Ask Court to Stop Justice Department from Targeting California Voters”, October 15, 2026.
- Democracy Docket, “Email from Nevada Chief Deputy Attorney General Greg D. Ott to the DHS Office of Intergovernmental Affairs”, September 23, 2026.
- Truth Social, “Post by Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)”, October 16, 2026.
- Truth Social, “Post by Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)”, October 16, 2026.
- X, “Post by U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept)”, October 16, 2026.
- X, “Post by Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli)”, October 16, 2026.
- X, “Post by Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli)”, October 17, 2026.
- X, “Post by Sen. Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla)”, October 16, 2026.
- X, “Post by Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (@LACountyRRCC)”, October 15, 2026.
- X, “Post by Sen. Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin)”, October 15, 2026.
- X, “Post by Attorney General Todd Blanche (@AGToddBlanche)”, October 16, 2026.
- Las Vegas Review-Journal (Ricardo Torres-Cortez), “185 would-be illegal Nevada voters were actually citizens, Nevada officials tell DHS”, September 24, 2026.
Positions above are attributed to the public statements and published reporting cited here. Quotations are taken from these sources; Radio Purple does not publish unattributed or invented quotes. See an error? Request a correction.
