The facts
Federal law enforcement throughout California today arrested 11 foreign nationals living in the United States who are charged in criminal complaints with fraudulently registering to vote in U.S. elections, contests in which most of them cast “illegal and fraudulently obtained ballots.” The takedown is called “Operation Protect the Vote”, a coordinated effort among all four California-based United States Attorney’s Offices. In all, 28 foreign nationals are charged; every one of them is a lawful permanent resident, or “green card” holder, and the release notes they are not U.S. citizens and are not permitted to vote in U.S. elections.
The charges include making false statements in a naturalization application, and for some defendants fraudulent voter registration, both felonies carrying a statutory maximum of five years in federal prison. The arrested defendants are expected to make their initial court appearances this afternoon; no pleas will be taken today.
Here is the part that should end careers: on October 13, the federal government gave California a list of these individuals “to ensure that their vote-by-mail ballots were set aside until these individuals’ citizenship status could be confirmed.” California, per the release, “declined to assist the federal government in setting aside their ballots,” which prompted a lawsuit by the United States seeking a court order “to prevent the unlawful dilution of American citizens’ votes”.
“Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, noting that each of the 28 defendants charged appears on a list of “more than 20,000 likely noncitizen registrants” provided to California election officials last week. “California refused to look at that list”, McCotter said, adding that “California must verify the citizenship of those more than 20,000 registrants before mail-in ballots are counted.” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli put it blunter: “California is mailing ballots to noncitizens, and they are refusing to comply with federal law”.
According to court documents described in the release, the defendants “knowingly and willfully lied under oath” that they were U.S. citizens on voter registration applications, got approved, and in many cases voted in recent U.S. elections, then lied again on naturalization paperwork that they had never claimed citizenship, registered, or voted. The release’s own typo survives into print: the first named defendant, Omar Alexander Muñoz, 72, a Belizean national living in Commerce, “fraudulently registered to vote in September 2019, claiming his was a U.S. citizen”, then voted in 2020, twice in 2022, and in 2024, and falsely stated under oath on his naturalization application that he had never claimed to be a U.S. citizen.
The other names in the release read like a loyalty program for fraud: Giezell Viduya Adawag, 41, a Philippines national living in Vacaville, registered to vote the day of the November 2024 general election, falsely certified she was a U.S. citizen, and voted that same day; Maricela Nazarín González, 43, of Clovis, registered in 2020 and voted in 2022, twice in 2024, and 2025; and Camino Giles Jiménez, 51, of Kerman, who the release says “knowingly voted in three U.S. elections despite knowing he is a noncitizen,” most recently the June 2026 primary.
All of the above are charges in criminal complaints. No one has entered a plea.
Our take
California did not get caught off guard. California got handed a list. On October 13, the federal government gave the state the names and asked it to set the ballots aside until citizenship could be confirmed, and the state, per the release, “declined to assist”. It did not misplace the list or claim it never arrived. Declined. To assist. There is a special kind of bureaucratic courage in being asked to look at 20,000 names and answering: nah.
So now we get to read the receipt for all that not-looking. Omar Alexander Muñoz, 72 years old, allegedly registered in 2019, voted in 2020, twice in 2022, and in 2024, then swore under oath he had never once claimed to be a citizen. A man who treated American elections like a punch card at a sandwich shop and then told the naturalization office it never happened. And the Department of Justice, chronicling this, writes that he registered “claiming his was a U.S. citizen”. His. Not he. Nobody in this entire story can read. The registrants could not read the citizenship box, the state could not read a list, and the feds could not read their own press release before hitting send.
The comedy is that the state’s position is now silence, followed by a federal lawsuit. The United States of America had to sue California to stop it from counting ballots it had already been told, by name, belong to noncitizens. Read that sentence again and tell me the state government is not a clown car with a dome on top.
“Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” that is McCotter’s line, and it is the whole obituary for California’s voter rolls: 28 charged, more than 20,000 names handed over and refused a glance, and a government that would rather be sued by the United States than open a spreadsheet. The list was right there. It was right fucking there.
