A top federal prosecutor says investigators confirmed 20,000 noncitizens on California's voter rolls received mail ballots, and his office is racing to keep those votes from counting.
Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for California's Central District, said federal investigators have determined that every one of the 20,000 people flagged on the state's rolls as likely noncitizens is not a U.S. citizen. He also said investigators have evidence those same people were mailed ballots this month.
His office sued California on Oct. 15 seeking a court order to sequester any ballots they return and keep them from being counted. On Wednesday, the Justice Department escalated the fight, asking a judge to rule on the emergency request by noon Thursday.
Essayli told Fox News Digital the figure is only the starting point.
"We believe it's at a minimum of 20,000. That's the floor."
He added that thousands more names are expected in the coming days as the review continues.
California sent mail ballots roughly two weeks before the Oct. 15 filing, including to people on the federal list, according to the government. Essayli said the problem is no longer theoretical.
"Ballots have already gone out, people are filling them out and they're being returned in process as we speak. So, the crime is occurring in real time."
Federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Essayli framed the case in plain terms: one illegal vote cancels out the vote of an American citizen, and local races often turn on very small margins.
His office is not asking counties to redesign their systems overnight. It wants the flagged ballots set aside.
"We're not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens."
That demand collides with how California processes mail ballots. Once a signature is checked, the ballot is pulled from its envelope and mixed with others. At that point, election workers say it can no longer be traced to a specific voter.
In Los Angeles County alone, officials have already processed 331,000 ballots, court records show. California election officials argued in filings that county offices lack both the authority and the access to federal records needed to verify citizenship. They also said sequestering ballots is impossible after that processing step.
Monica Flores, an assistant registrar-recorder in Los Angeles County, filed a court declaration describing a preliminary review of 200 records from the federal list tied to LA County addresses. She said 112 matched canceled or inactive registrations, meaning no ballot was mailed for the November election in those cases. Among records where birthplace was "meaningfully reported," 38.9% listed a United States birthplace, what she called "strong evidence of citizenship."
Essayli rejected the suggestion that the sample clears the list. He said the information his office has shows the people at issue likely received ballots, and he wants the names of anyone the county now claims it canceled. If cancellations are happening based on the federal records, he called that "great news," then added that everything remains to be determined.
Similar pressure has already produced related enforcement fights, including a Justice Department deadline for California to check suspected noncitizen mail ballots in earlier stages of the dispute.
The current list did not appear out of thin air. In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent California a letter flagging nearly 200,000 voters as possible noncitizens. Federal investigators have been working through those records. Essayli said every person on the present 20,000-name list was individually reviewed by a federal employee at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or Homeland Security Investigations.
He said California is making the work harder than it needs to be. If the state turned over driver license and Social Security data, he argued, federal systems could sort citizens from noncitizens quickly.
"If California will make available or submit its records, we can quickly put them through our established systems to determine who's a citizen and who's not. They're forcing us to do it the hard way, which we're willing to do because this is very important."
California, like dozens of other states, has treated that personal data as confidential and refused to hand it over, prompting Justice Department court actions against several states.
That standoff fits a wider pattern of federal efforts against alleged noncitizen voting schemes, including cases where agents moved on an alleged noncitizen voter fraud operation in California after prior DOJ deadlines.
The ballot-sequestration lawsuit is not the only federal case. In September 2025, the Justice Department sued to force California to produce its complete, unredacted voter-registration database, names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and voting histories. In January, a district court sided with California, dismissed the case, and called the request "unprecedented and illegal." The department appealed. That fight is still going.
Essayli said California election officials are not running independent citizenship checks. They rely on what the person wrote when registering.
"They're not independently checking any of this information. They're going off the information that was provided to them by the person who registered to vote."
He put the enforcement baseline in one sentence: noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, and his office intends to enforce that law. "One noncitizen voting is too many."
Readers tracking individual cases have already seen how registration gaps can surface in practice, including when a green card holder in California's largest noncitizen voting case described casting a ballot.
Essayli and Gov. Gavin Newsom traded blows on social media earlier this week. Newsom's office has said California follows federal law on election integrity. State and local election offices did not immediately respond to questions about the latest federal claims.
The political temperature around the same dispute has stayed high, with prior warnings that California officials could face jail time over suspected noncitizen ballots if they ignore federal demands.
For national context, reporting elsewhere has documented tens of thousands of noncitizens landing on voter rolls over time, a trend that continues to fuel calls for stronger verification nationwide, including coverage of how reviewers found 30,000 noncitizens on rolls since 2000 while senators pressed for action.
The immediate question before the judge is narrow and urgent: whether California must set aside ballots tied to the federal list before more of them disappear into the processed pile. Essayli says the evidence already shows mail ballots reached noncitizens. California officials say they cannot re-identify ballots once envelopes are opened and that they lack federal databases to run citizenship checks on their own.
Meanwhile, the larger database appeal grinds on, and investigators keep working through the nearly 200,000 names first flagged in July. The 20,000 figure, Essayli insists, is the floor, not the ceiling.
American elections rest on a simple rule: citizens vote, and noncitizens do not. When a state resists basic verification while mail ballots are already heading back, it is voters who pay the price for that refusal.
