Justice Department charges 28 green-card holders in California voting cases

The Justice Department on Monday announced charges against 28 lawful permanent residents in California, accusing them of election and immigration crimes two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

According to the department, 11 people were arrested Monday under what it calls Operation Protect the Vote, run jointly by all four U.S. attorney's offices in the state. All defendants are presumed innocent.

The charges

Prosecutors allege a mix of offenses: falsely claiming citizenship on voter registration forms, lying on naturalization applications about past voting, and voting in a federal election as a noncitizen. The registration and naturalization counts carry up to five years in prison; the noncitizen voting misdemeanor carries up to one year.

A larger fight over the rolls

The department said all 28 appear on a list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizen registrants it gave California on Oct. 13. The state declined to set aside those voters' mail ballots, and the federal government has sued.

NPR reported that many of the 28 did not appear to have voted, and some registered more than 20 years ago. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has called the federal demands unlawful, and Los Angeles County lawyers argued that federal law bars removing voters wholesale this close to an election, NPR reported.

Research has not found noncitizen voting to be widespread, NPR noted. Over the past seven weeks, the department has charged 113 noncitizens in 20 states with voting or registration crimes, according to NPR.