Trump admin. claims it confirmed 20,000 California voters are noncitizens. It didn’t 

In public statements, the Trump administration — including a top federal prosecutor helping to bring the case — misrepresented central allegations in its lawsuit* seeking to bar California from counting ballots from tens of thousands of voters in the midterms.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) falsely claimed Friday that the federal government confirmed that the roughly 20,000 voters challenged in the new suit are, in fact, noncitizens. 

In court, however, the federal government has said only that it suspects that the voters in question are noncitizens — but that it has not confirmed that’s true, and doesn’t have time to do so.

“The 20k represents the number of noncitizens confirmed by a review of federal databases,” Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, whose name is on DOJ’s complaint against California, wrote on social media Friday.

And in a post of its own Friday, DHS said it had “manually verified” that the voters were noncitizens by reviewing California’s voter registration records, adding that it had “completed verification” of the names. 

The department was responding to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration policy expert who had accused Essayli of misconstruing the facts of the lawsuit.

But the lawsuit filed by DOJ Thursday against California and Los Angeles County said only that DHS “believes” the 20,000 are “likely” noncitizens. 

“It is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals,” the lawsuit added.

Though the federal government said it could not confirm their citizenships before Election Day, it expected California and Los Angeles to confirm the citizenship of all 20,000 voters in 48 hours or face a lawsuit.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) and other state officials have strongly disputed the reliability of the Trump administration’s 20,000 figure and have criticized the DOJ for failing to detail the underlying methodology or data behind its claims.

In the suit, DOJ said DHS’s subagencies identified the 20,000 people it believes are registered to vote in California by manually comparing the state’s public voter roll to immigration and naturalization records.

However, when DHS used this process against other states — such as Nevada — it has proven to be highly inaccurate. 

Other DHS initiatives to identify noncitizens on voter rolls have also routinely falsely flagged naturalized citizens as noncitizens. California has the highest proportion of naturalized citizens among U.S. states, with naturalized citizens making up roughly 15.2% of its total population.

Though none of the voters on the list are confirmed noncitizens, the DOJ Friday told California and Los Angeles election officials they risk “criminal exposure” if they count ballots cast by those individuals.

*The Elias Law Group (ELG) is representing pro-voting groups who have asked the court to be added as intervenor-defendants to DOJ’s lawsuit against California. ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.