Trump DOJ sues California over 20,000 alleged noncitizens on voter rolls

The Justice Department sued California on Thursday, October 15, 2026, asking a federal court to prevent the state from counting certain mail ballots connected to more than 20,000 people the Trump administration describes as likely noncitizens. California officials reject the federal claim and say the department has not established that the people on its list are ineligible to vote.

The filing is a material escalation from a demand the department sent two days earlier. That letter gave California and Los Angeles County 48 hours to examine names delivered on a password-protected USB drive, verify citizenship and separate any returned ballots associated with people whose status could not be confirmed. The new lawsuit asks a judge to impose those steps after local and state officials declined to carry them out.

What the Justice Department is asking the court to do

The government says its list contains more than 20,000 people it considers likely noncitizens. According to the complaint as described by the Justice Department and news organizations, federal lawyers want California to set aside mail ballots linked to those names and independently verify citizenship before including the ballots in the count for the November 3 midterm election.

The department says it is not asking for a broad purge of California’s voter rolls or the automatic cancellation of votes. Its requested order would instead pause tabulation of the flagged ballots while eligibility is checked. The filing relies on the federal government’s authority over federal-election requirements rather than the civil-rights statutes used in earlier Trump administration lawsuits seeking state voter data, ABC News reported.

The distinction does not resolve the central factual dispute. The administration has labeled the people on its list likely noncitizens, but that description is an allegation, not a finding that any named person registered or voted unlawfully. The department has not publicly released the list or a complete explanation of the method used to produce it.

California disputes the claim and the process

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said state law allows only U.S. citizens to register and requires officials to remove ineligible registrants. She accused the Justice Department of trying to obtain protected voter information and undermine public confidence in the election. Her office also said it had not received the list that federal officials delivered to Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles County Clerk Dean Logan said his office would not open the drive because it was not considered a secure medium and the federal letter did not explain how many people were involved or what records the device contained. County officials also cited established privacy and information-security procedures.

The reliability of federal citizenship screening is likely to become a central question. ABC News and the Associated Press noted an earlier review in Nevada after the Department of Homeland Security identified 185 people as potential noncitizens. Nevada officials reported that all 185 were citizens. That result does not determine whether the California list is accurate, but it illustrates the risk of false matches when government databases are used to assess voter eligibility.

A court will now decide whether to intervene

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The Justice Department is seeking rapid relief because ballots are already being returned ahead of the November 3 election. California can oppose the request on factual and legal grounds, including whether the federal government has shown that the flagged people are ineligible and whether a court may order ballots separated this close to Election Day.

No court has ruled that the more than 20,000 people identified by the administration are noncitizens, and the lawsuit does not establish that any illegal vote has been cast. It creates an immediate legal fight over how California should handle the federal list and whether the Trump administration has supplied enough reliable evidence to justify changing the state’s ballot-counting process.

Sources and image credit

Primary filing announcement and independent reporting: U.S. Department of Justice; Associated Press; ABC News; and Reuters.

Image: California State Capitol in Sacramento, photographed by Mackinacbridge on June 22, 2021, via Wikimedia Commons. Dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. The original was center-cropped and resized to 1600×900; no text was added.