Trump’s List of Alleged Noncitizen Voters in California May Be Filled With Errors

Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter stands next to a display showing photos of people charged with illegally registering to vote during a news conference in Los Angeles on Oct. 19, 2026.Jae C. Hong/AP Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. The Trump administration’s bid to stop 20,000 “likely noncitizen” voters from casting midterm ballots in California appears to be based on a list that’s riddled with inaccuracies. Two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Voting Rights Project found that over 40 percent of the people the Department of Justice has deemed likely noncitizens were not even on the state’s voter rolls in the first place, and many others are likely legally eligible to vote. The analysts shared the conclusion in a legal filing on Saturday. The Justice Department’s list was shared the day before as a result of the Voting Rights Project’s lawsuit with the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) against the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere in the election. In the lawsuit, CHIRLA and California voter Pedro Trujillo argued that the methods the federal government used to create its noncitizen voter list risk incorrectly labeling naturalized citizens and disrupt election administration. According to the Associated Press, the UCLA researchers found that nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens in the state were “highly likely” to have been inaccurately labeled as ineligible to vote. Several California counties have also conducted checks and found numerous mistakes. The federal government first provided its list of 20,000 names to California on October 13, requesting they validate each individual’s citizenship status. The state declined to help the Trump administration, prompting it to file a lawsuit seeking to “prevent unlawful dilution of American citizens’ votes and to protect the integrity of our nation’s elections.” As my colleague Ari Berman has written in the lead-up to the midterms, Trump is following through with his threats to weaponize the Justice Department over claims of supposed voter fraud. Federal prosecutors in California charged 28 people and arrested at least 11 from its list of 20,000 nearly two weeks ago, alleging without evidence they illegally registered to vote. In a Tuesday hearing, the Justice Department told a federal judge that it created its entire list by checking a commercially-bought dataset containing partial California voter rolls against a government list of people who had been assigned numbers in the federal immigration system. The administration has also threatened prosecution of state and local election officials who process ballots from its list. Trump acolytes quickly began refuting the data analysts’ findings Saturday night. “This is a bogus report by the activist illegal immigrant rights group CHIRLA,” Bill Essayli, the US Attorney in Los Angeles’ district, posted on X. This is a bogus report by the activist illegal immigrant rights group CHIRLA. How would they know who is registered to vote and who is a citizen? They don’t (and shouldn’t) have access to any official records.It’s remarkable that the media accepts whatever these people say as… https://t.co/XUz9X7Cpdk— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) October 31, 2026 “Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen,” Kiersten V. Pels, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, wrote in an email to the Associated Press, arguing in support of the bid to discount the 20,000 votes. “The Department makes no apology for protecting those votes.” Multiple judges have denied the federal government’s demands as unconstitutional and a threat to elections, but this has not stopped its requests to other states. On Monday, the Trump administration asked Washington state to remove any ballots from more than 400 people it claims may be noncitizens.