DOJ Has Charged 34 Noncitizens in California. The Supreme Court Just Refused to Set Aside the Ballots.
Tuesday, November 3, 2026 (Election Day). The U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles charged six more foreign nationals on Monday with registering and voting illegally, bringing the California total under “Operation Protect the Vote” to 34. Hours later, the Supreme Court denied a Justice Department emergency request to keep California from counting about 20,000 mail ballots the department flagged as likely cast by noncitizens.
The two events point in different directions. Prosecutors are producing indictments from the list; the courts have declined to treat the list as grounds to stop the count. All defendants are presumed innocent.
- 34noncitizens charged in CaliforniaSix announced Nov. 2, 28 on Oct. 19, per U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli's office.
- ~20,000ballots DOJ asked to set asideThe department's figure for people it calls likely noncitizens; the list's method has not been published.
- 1 lineSupreme Court orderUnsigned, no noted dissents, per CBS News and the Washington Examiner; the application went to Justice Kagan and was referred to the full Court.
- 5 yearsmaximum sentence per countFalse statements on naturalization applications, per NBC Los Angeles.
The six new defendants live in Los Angeles County: Palmdale, West Hills, Agua Dulce and Canoga Park. NBC Los Angeles lists their nationalities as Philippine, Mexican, Israeli, Canadian and Iranian. Five are in custody and one is being sought. The post by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli (R) names the first, Sirgalahad Camua, 43, of Palmdale, who it says voted by mail in May 2020, November 2024 and June 2026.
OPERATION PROTECT THE VOTE My office today charged six more noncitizens for illegally registering and voting, bringing California's total to 34. Defendants announced today: • Sirgalahad Camua, 43, of Palmdale, voted by mail in May 2020, November 2024 and June 2026.
The charge, per NBC, is false statements on naturalization applications, a felony with a five-year maximum. Essayli says every one of the 34 appeared on the list the department gave California officials: “every one of their names was on the list we provided to California officials,” as quoted by Legal Insurrection. That is a notable claim, because it ties the list to filed cases. It rests on prosecutors' word; indictments have not been tested at trial.
On Monday morning the Solicitor General asked the Court to enjoin California from counting, or to set aside, the roughly 20,000 flagged ballots. The application went to Justice Elena Kagan, who referred it to the full Court. By evening it was denied, in an unsigned order with no explanation and no noted dissents, per the Washington Examiner, CBS and CNBC.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D-CA) called the request “a Hail Mary” and said it “was baseless,” per CNBC. A one-line denial says nothing about the merits; the Court gave no reasons, so any reading beyond “the request was refused” is inference.
The path was already steep. The Ninth Circuit rejected DOJ's earlier emergency bid 2-1, saying it lacked jurisdiction because the department had not given the district court adequate opportunity to act, and that the emergency was “at least in part, a self-constructed one,” per coverage of the ruling and the Missouri Independent's report on the panel. Judge Bumatay dissented.
At an October 27 hearing in Los Angeles, U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, pressed Essayli on why a ballot-segregation order was needed when prosecutors already had a tool. Democracy Docket, which attended, quotes him: “You've got a remedy for goodness sake. Go out and indict.” CBS reports Carter called DOJ's process “rife with uncertainty and errors.”
“You've got a remedy for goodness sake. Go out and indict.”
U.S. District Judge David Carter, C.D. Cal., Oct. 27 hearing, per Democracy Docket
Essayli's reply, as quoted by Democracy Docket, was that the government could not “do nothing and proceed to count the votes,” and that “we're never going to stand here and tell you everything's 100%.” Essayli also told the court, per the same report, “We charged 28 people last week”; six more followed on November 2. One headline circulating on conservative sites says prosecutors answered “game on”; we found no speaker or transcript for that phrase and do not attribute it to anyone.
The documented core is substantial: 34 people charged in a federal court, each accused of registering or voting despite not being a citizen, all of whom, by the department's account, were on the list California was asked to check. That is a concrete accountability fact about California's registration safeguards, which rely on applicants attesting to citizenship under penalty of perjury.
What is not documented is the size of the underlying problem. Thirty-four defendants is not 20,000. Los Angeles County's own sampling reportedly found some people on the list were citizens, per an AP report on October 28 that we saw only in search coverage. The department has not published how it built the list. A federal district judge questioned the process, and a Ninth Circuit majority declined DOJ's earlier emergency bid on jurisdictional grounds.
Documented: 34 federal defendants; the Supreme Court's one-line denial; Judge Carter's remark; Essayli's claim that all 34 were on the list.
Disputed: whether the 20,000 figure is reliable; whether California was ever properly handed the list.
Unknown: how many names on the list are actual noncitizens, and whether any ballots counted today were cast illegally.
Prosecutors have charged 34 people they say were noncitizens on the rolls. They have not yet shown a court that the list justifies stopping a count, and with ballots being tallied today, the cases will now have to carry the argument.
