A green card holder charged in the Justice Department’s California noncitizen voting sweep says election workers took his ID and let him vote, without ever warning he was ineligible.
Kamlesh Shah, a 67-year-old Indian national and lawful permanent resident in Sacramento, is one of 28 noncitizens federal prosecutors charged in a coordinated statewide action dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote.” The Department of Justice says the defendants are green card holders who allegedly made false statements on naturalization paperwork or illegally registered to vote. Shah’s account of Election Day 2024 puts a simple, damning process on the record: he showed up, handed over identification, and cast a ballot.
Noncitizens, including green card holders, are not allowed to vote in U.S. elections. That rule is not ambiguous. Yet Shah told local television that the election officer at a community center never raised it.
“No, nobody told me,” Shah said of any warning that he could not vote.
“See, that’s very confusing because when I went there, the office there, the election officer over there, didn’t say anything about it.”
He added that the officer “just asked for my ID and my number.” Sacramento County later said it flagged Shah’s voter information, along with that of another local resident, and will act based on the federal case and guidance from the California secretary of state.
Federal prosecutors describe all 28 defendants as lawful permanent residents. The Justice Department put the legal line in plain terms.
“All 28 foreign nationals charged are lawful permanent residents (LPRs), or ‘green card’ holders. Although LPRs have legal immigration status in the United States, they are not US citizens and are not permitted to vote in US elections.”
The cases stretch beyond one confused registration desk. José Probitsado Amaro, 51, a citizen of the Philippines living in National City in San Diego County, allegedly registered by falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen. Alexander Muñoz, 72, a Belizean national in the City of Commerce, is accused of fraudulently registering in September 2019 and then voting in 2020, 2022, and 2024. The California Post witnessed Muñoz’s arrest at 6 a.m.
First Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli rejected the idea that 28 arrests close the book. Posting on X, he compared the haul to traffic enforcement and made clear prosecutors see a larger problem than the first week of charges.
“No, this isn’t the total number of noncitizen voters in California. Police can’t catch every speeder, but that doesn’t mean speeding isn’t widespread. 28 is what we could charge in a week.”
That stance tracks other recent federal work on the same threat, including when the DOJ charged 10 foreign nationals with illegal voting in Minnesota.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta answered the arrests at a San Francisco press conference by condemning fraud in the abstract and then minimizing the scale. He called voter fraud illegal and wrong, then framed the 28 cases as statistical noise.
“It’s.0001% of all of the registered voters and it makes the point there is no widespread voter fraud and that there is, at times, isolated one-off examples of voter fraud.”
Bonta also said every count, recount, hand count, and case audit supports that view. The federal charging documents and Essayli’s week-of-work comment point the other way: prosecutors found enough to charge dozens quickly, and they are not treating the roster as exhaustive.
The dispute hardened further when Justice Department officials ordered California to review a thumb-drive list of 20,000 “likely” noncitizens on the voter rolls and gave the state 48 hours to comply. Secretary of State Shirley Weber refused. In a letter, she accused the department of demanding steps she cast as a threat to lawful voters.
“demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians’ right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”
Voters who follow national election-integrity fights have seen this pattern before, federal pressure, state resistance, and a running argument over who polices the rolls, including after a Biden-appointed judge held that only states can bar noncitizens from federal elections.
Shah’s story is the simplest version of the failure. He says he registered and voted on the day of the November 2024 general election. He describes a community-center desk that checked identification and a number, then processed him without stating the citizenship rule. If that account holds, the safeguard was a question never asked.
Amaro’s case, as federal authorities describe it, is different in kind: a false claim of U.S. citizenship on a registration. Muñoz’s alleged record is different again, a 2019 registration followed by ballots in three successive federal cycles. One case suggests a soft checkpoint. Another suggests a false statement. A third suggests years on the rolls without a successful purge.
Sacramento County’s elections office told reporters it “consistently follows established federal and state laws and procedures as well as guidance from the California Secretary of State regarding voter registration records and voter eligibility.” It also said it “will continue to follow all applicable legal requirements and guidance from state election officials to protect voters’ access to the ballot and ensure elections are administered in accordance with the law.” Those lines stress process. They do not explain how a green card holder walked out with a counted ballot.
The same California fight has already produced related federal deadlines and follow-on arrests, including when the Justice Department gave California two days to check suspected noncitizen mailed ballots and when feds busted an alleged noncitizen fraud operation in the state days after a DOJ deadline.
The defendants face charges. They have not been convicted in the account of this bust. Specific statutes, case numbers, and the full roster of all 28 names were not laid out in the public summary that detailed Shah, Amaro, and Muñoz. The methodology behind the 20,000-name “likely” noncitizen list also remains contested, which is exactly the ground Weber claimed in refusing the 48-hour order.
None of that erases what is already on the table. Federal prosecutors charged 28 green card holders in one state operation. One defendant says the poll worker never told him he was ineligible. Another allegedly claimed citizenship he did not have. A third allegedly voted across multiple cycles after a 2019 registration. The state’s top election official would not run the federal list. The state’s attorney general called the arrests proof of rarity.
Similar enforcement is moving elsewhere, not only on the West Coast. The department has also charged 16 people with illegal voting and election fraud across seven states, underscoring that California is not the only front.
Lawful permanent residency is legal status. It is not citizenship. Citizenship is the line Congress drew for the franchise. When that line depends on a clerk who never mentions it, or on a form statement nobody meaningfully checks, the public is asked to trust a system that just showed how it fails in practice.
California’s leaders can keep calling each case a one-off. Federal prosecutors keep finding the next one. Secure elections require citizenship checks that work before the ballot is cast, not press conferences after the handcuffs come out.
