He Signed a California Voter Registration Under Penalty of Perjury. Federal Prosecutors Say He Was Never a U.S. Citizen.
Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores, 30, of Winnetka in the San Fernando Valley, is a Honduran national who has held a U.S. green card since entering the country in 2002 and has never applied for citizenship. On August 28, 2026, Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested him on two federal felony counts: fraudulent voter registration and making a false claim of U.S. citizenship.
According to the criminal complaint, Rivera Flores submitted an online California voter registration on November 4, 2025, and checked the box attesting — under penalty of perjury — that he was a U.S. citizen. He is not accused of casting a single ballot. The case is pending, and Rivera Flores is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
It is a small case on its face — one man, one form, zero votes. Prosecutors are treating it as the opening argument in a much larger fight over who is actually on California’s voter rolls, and how hard the state will fight federal investigators trying to find out.
- 2 felony counts — fraudulent voter registration and false claim of U.S. citizenship, each carrying up to 5 years in federal prison — 10-year maximum combined · Source: USAO-CDCA
- Nov. 4, 2025 — the date Rivera Flores submitted the online registration falsely attesting citizenship under penalty of perjury · Source: criminal complaint
- Zero votes cast — Rivera Flores is not accused of voting in any election · Source: USAO-CDCA
- 190,832 — the disputed, DHS-claimed count of noncitizens on California's rolls — a separate figure the state calls “fallacious” and DHS itself has admitted was inflated · Source: DHS; CA Secretary of State
- 23 years — how long Rivera Flores had lived in the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident, never applying for citizenship, before the registration at issue · Source: Legal Insurrection
Rivera Flores was taken into custody in the San Fernando Valley on August 28, 2026. TheU.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced the arrest the same day, framing it as the first in what officials promised would be a wave of similar cases.
“Today's arrest is the first of many to come. Unfortunately, because states like California allow non-citizens to easily register to vote and receive a ballot by mail, there's no telling how many non-citizens are currently registered to vote.”
Bill Essayli (R), First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Central District of California · Aug. 28, 2026
In Washington, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief cast the arrest as a warning shot to every state that lets residents register without documentary proof of citizenship.
“Let this criminal complaint serve as a reminder that the Justice Department stands ready to enforce the laws Congress enacted to ensure only American citizens vote in federal elections.”
Harmeet Dhillon (R), Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Civil Rights Division
Each count carries a statutory maximum of five years in federal prison, a ten-year ceiling if Rivera Flores is convicted on both. A felony conviction for a lawful permanent resident also carries a civil consequence separate from any prison term: it can trigger removal proceedings under federal immigration law, independent of whatever sentence a judge ultimately imposes.
🚨 Election Fraud Arrests Begin... Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores, 30, of Winnetka, is charged with two felonies...
California’s online and DMV “motor voter” registration systems do not require a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization paperwork. An applicant checks a box swearing to U.S. citizenship under penalty of perjury, and the registration goes through. That is the box federal investigators say Rivera Flores checked on November 4, 2025 — the false attestation that anchors both felony counts against him.
The registration was not investigators’ first encounter with Rivera Flores. He had separately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in February 2026 for disrupting an ICE enforcement operation at a federal building in Camarillo. According to the affidavit supporting the voter-fraud complaint, Rivera Flores also sent an HSI agent a series of taunting text messages — reproduced in the affidavit verbatim, typos included — referencing “the mid terms” and telling the agent he lacked “qualified immunity.” Investigators say those messages helped draw their attention back to his voter-registration history.
Rivera Flores’s own signed attestation is the proven part of this story — a specific document, a specific date, a specific name. It is a separate matter, and a much shakier one, from a number DHS put into circulation over the summer: a claim that as many as 190,832 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, first reported on July 17, 2026. That figure should not be read as an established fact alongside Rivera Flores’s case — it is a contested statistical claim that California’s own election officials dispute, and that DHS itself partly walked back.
On August 25, 2026 — three days before the Rivera Flores arrest — DHS acknowledged that the broader multi-state numbers behind the 190,832 figure had been inflated. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) said she had “serious doubts about the reliability of your data and accuracy of your claims,” and called the underlying analysis “fallacious.” Attorney General Rob Bonta (D)’s office went further, arguing the state’s election system has already been checked exhaustively:
“Every count, recount, hand count, audit and court case has demonstrated there is no widespread voter fraud.”
Office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D)
Essayli did not back off the broader claim after DHS’s partial retraction — he used the arrest to renew a direct demand on the state.
“We again renew our request that California immediately comply with our requests to audit their voter rolls.”
Bill Essayli (R), First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Central District of California
States like California do not screen voter registration applications for citizenship...
The Rivera Flores case lands inside two other unresolved legal fights over the integrity of California’s voter rolls. Judicial Watch is backing an NVRA lawsuit, Wagner v. Weber, that targets 873,092 inactive registrations the group says California has failed to clean from its rolls as federal law requires. Separately, a DOJ lawsuit demanding California turn over its full 23-million-record statewide voter file was dismissed by a federal district court on January 15, 2026 — the court called the demand a violation of separation of powers — and the government has appealed to the Ninth Circuit. That appeal remains pending, which means federal prosecutors still do not have the systemic, statewide records match they originally sought. Individual cases built from a single flagged registration, like Rivera Flores’s, are the tool they have in the meantime.
Governor: Gavin Newsom (D) — signed SB 73 on May 27, 2026, making it a felony for law enforcement, including federal agents, to access voter rolls or seize ballots without a court order.
Attorney General: Rob Bonta (D) — his office maintains that repeated audits and recounts have found no widespread voter fraud in the state.
Secretary of State: Shirley Weber (D) — disputes DHS’s noncitizen-count methodology as unreliable and “fallacious.”
SB 73’s signature came four months after the DOJ’s voter-roll suit was dismissed and two months before DHS’s disputed 190,832 figure surfaced. Whatever its intent, the practical effect is that the same state officials disputing DHS’s numbers have also made it a crime for the federal agents pressing to verify those numbers to access the rolls directly without a judge’s order. Essayli’s renewed audit request runs straight into that law.
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The arrest immediately became a talking point well beyond the courtroom. Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell (R) reacted on X, arguing the case validated years of dismissed warnings.
“They said this wasn't happening. But it's the tip of the iceberg. Every US Attorney needs to be on this crisis.”
Richard Grenell (R), former Acting Director of National Intelligence
They said this wasn't happening. But it's the tip of the iceberg. Every US Attorney needs to be on this crisis.
The White House framed the single arrest as confirmation of a broader pattern it has argued for months.
“Despite the media and Democrats claiming it never happens, the evidence of non-citizens registering to vote in our elections continues to pile up.”
Lauren Bis, Trump White House spokeswoman
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None of that political noise changes what the criminal complaint actually alleges: one man, one signed attestation, zero votes cast, facing up to five years per count. Rivera Flores has not been convicted of anything, and the surrounding fight over 190,832 disputed registrations statewide is not evidence against him. But his case is now the concrete example both sides will point to — prosecutors as proof California’s attestation-only system invites fraud, the state as proof its safeguards caught the one person who lied. Essayli’s office has signaled this case is a template, not a one-off: HSI-led investigations that trace back through voter files after a separate immigration-enforcement encounter, rather than the systemic rolls audit California has so far declined to permit. No trial date has been set as of publication.
A Honduran national who had held a green card for 23 years by the time he filled out the form is charged with signing a false citizenship attestation on a California voter form — a real, documented case that never resulted in a vote cast, now pending trial. It sits beside, but is not proof of, DHS’s separate and already partly-retracted claim that nearly 191,000 noncitizens are on the state’s rolls. California requires only a signature to register; federal agents now need a court order to check that signature against anything. Both of those facts are true at once, and neither one resolves the other.
Last updated August 29, 2026