Justice Department charges 28 green card holders in California with voting crimes in Operation Protect the Vote

Federal agents fanned out across California on Monday morning and started making arrests before most of the state was awake. By the end of the announcement, 28 people had been charged and 11 were in custody, in the largest single voting enforcement action of this election cycle.

The operation, called Operation Protect the Vote, ran through all four of California’s federal districts: 13 cases in the Central District around Los Angeles, six in the Eastern District, five in the Northern District and four in the Southern District. The charges are combinations of unlawful voting by an alien, false claims of United States citizenship to register or vote, fraudulent registration, false statements on naturalization applications, and knowingly depriving California residents of a fair and impartial election. The felonies carry up to five years in prison and the misdemeanor voting charge up to one year. Prosecutors say 21 of the 28 also cast ballots, most of them in elections from 2020 through 2024 and one in the June 2026 primary.

Every defendant, the department said, is a lawful permanent resident, a green card holder, and every one of them appears on the list of more than 20,000 California registrants the department says are likely noncitizens. “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,” acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said. “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 department sued California days ago asking a court to stop the state from counting mail ballots from the flagged registrants until their citizenship is determined. State officials declined to act on the list and called the demand outrageous.

The first arrest the cameras caught was in Commerce, east of Los Angeles, where Homeland Security Investigations agents took Omar Alexander Muñoz, 72, a Belizean national, from his home at about 6 in the morning. Prosecutors say Muñoz falsely claimed citizenship when he registered in September 2019, then voted in 2020, twice in 2022 and again in 2024, and lied about it under oath on a naturalization application. He has past convictions for grand theft and narcotics possession. In National City, agents arrested José Probitsado Amaro, 51, a citizen of the Philippines, who prosecutors say registered by falsely claiming citizenship.

“Today’s arrests confirm what we suspected and what we put California on notice for: noncitizens are voting in California elections, which is unconstitutional and illegal,” said Bill Essayli, the first assistant US attorney for the Central District. Essayli said the state asks would be voters only to attest to citizenship and requires no documentation, and he put the nationwide total of people charged with illegal voting and registration offenses at 113. Early voting for the midterms is already under way in California. The charges are allegations; no defendant has entered a plea and each is presumed innocent, as of October 19.