Federa agents fanned out across California early Monday under an operation called Protect the Vote, arresting more than two dozen foreign nationals accused of registering and voting in American elections.
One of them is Alexander Muñoz, a 72-year-old Belizean national taken into custody around 6 a.m. at his home in Commerce. Prosecutors allege he falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering in 2019, then voted in 2020, twice in 2022, and again in 2024 — and later lied on his naturalization application about having made that false citizenship claim. Four elections. One registration form nobody checked.
The arrests landed days after a confrontation that Sacramento forced. The Justice Department identified more than 20,000 registrations it believed belonged to noncitizens and gave California 48 hours to verify them — asking officials to segregate, not cancel, the associated ballots while eligibility was determined. Secretary of State Shirley Weber disputed the evidence without producing any of her own. Newsom called it a desperate attempt to suppress California voters three weeks out. The state refused, and the DOJ went to court.
Now federal prosecutors are walking defendants out of their homes. Bill Essayli, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said the arrests confirm what his office suspected and what California was put on notice about: noncitizens are voting in California elections, and it is illegal.
Trump warns California election officials: “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” pic.twitter.com/iCuc8s4lmj
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 17, 2026
Everyone arrested is presumed innocent until a jury says otherwise, of course, and not all 20,000 flagged registrations will prove ineligible. Those caveats are real and they do not help Newsom at all. His position was that there was nothing to find. Monday’s indictments allege something far more specific than a theoretical weakness — named individuals, specific election cycles, ballots that were cast and counted.
Which leaves the governor with one question he cannot answer: if the system is sound, how did these votes get through?
The answer is in the design. California mails ballots automatically to every active registration and verifies citizenship at the front end by asking the applicant to check a box. There is no documentary proof required, no cross-reference against federal immigration records, nothing between the honor system and a counted ballot. Muñoz allegedly checked the box and voted for six years before anyone noticed.
This is precisely what the SAVE America Act would have addressed — proof of citizenship at registration, which stops the problem before a ballot exists. Senate Democrats killed it, with help from four Republicans, insisting the whole premise was manufactured.
Meanwhile the state’s response to federal scrutiny has been to make after-the-fact investigation harder by statute while refusing verification beforehand. Block both ends and the question becomes permanently unanswerable, which appears to be the design.
Fifteen days until the election, and Gavin Newsom’s California still hasn’t checked the list. So the Trump administration is doing it for him.
