A federal grand jury in Southern California has indicted ten alleged noncitizens on election fraud charges, prosecutors announced on Wednesday, in the latest wave of cases from a federal crackdown on suspected noncitizen voting that has unfolded alongside the 2026 midterm elections. The defendants are accused of illegally registering to vote and casting ballots after falsely claiming to be United States citizens, according to prosecutors. The charges are accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
The indictments were announced by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who said on social media that a federal grand jury had returned ten indictments against noncitizens who registered and voted in California elections as part of an initiative prosecutors call Operation Protect the Vote. According to reports on the announcement, prosecutors described the new indictments as bringing the number of defendants in the Southern California investigation to 28.
Among those indicted on Wednesday were Alexander Muñoz and four others who were arrested on October 19, three defendants who had previously appeared in court, and two people who remain fugitives, according to reports. Prosecutors say the suspects were identified through a list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens who, federal authorities say, appeared on California's voter rolls ahead of the November midterm elections.
Who Was Indicted and What Prosecutors Allege
Prosecutors allege that Alexander Muñoz, 72, a Belizean national living in the City of Commerce, fraudulently registered to vote in September 2019 by claiming he was a U.S. citizen. Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Muñoz at his home around 6 a.m. on October 19, according to reports.
Another defendant indicted on Wednesday was Muhammad Khan, 50, of Anaheim, a Pakistani national accused of submitting a ballot while falsely claiming U.S. citizenship. Salvadoran national Ana DomÃnguez, 60, of Long Beach, was also indicted; prosecutors allege she fraudulently registered to vote in July 2006 and later lied on naturalization paperwork in March by claiming she had never registered.
DomÃnguez, José Antonio Bañuelos-DÃaz and Jesús Narez-Madrigal were among those arrested during the October 19 operation, along with Khan and Muñoz, according to reports. Other defendants were arrested in the days that followed, including Carlos Antonio Galeas and Flavio Alejandro Zúñiga on October 20 and Amandeep Kaur on October 26. Thida Lwin was also charged last month, reports said.
Two suspects in the prosecutor's jurisdiction remain fugitives, according to reports. They include Axel Giovani Prera GarcÃa, 46, a Guatemalan national and Pico Rivera resident, who allegedly fraudulently registered to vote in 2002 and 2005 and made false statements about it in his naturalization paperwork in June 2025.
The defendants face a range of federal charges, including making false statements in naturalization applications, according to reports. Prosecutors have called it the largest voter fraud takedown in California history.
A Crackdown That Escalated Days Before the Election
The Wednesday indictments did not arrive out of nowhere. They are the latest step in a federal enforcement push that intensified in the final days before voters went to the polls on November 3.
Two days before the election, on November 2, prosecutors announced six additional charges in Los Angeles, including cases involving people accused of voting illegally and then denying their registration histories while applying to become naturalized U.S. citizens. That same day, the Justice Department announced election-related charges involving 63 people nationwide, and said federal prosecutors had charged 195 noncitizens across 25 states with illegal voting or registration offenses in the previous nine weeks, according to reports on the announcement.
The California cases sit inside a broader legal fight over the list of more than 20,000 people federal authorities suspect may not be U.S. citizens but appear on the state's voter registration lists. The Trump administration went to court seeking to have ballots associated with people on that list set aside until their citizenship could be verified. A federal judge declined to order that step, and on November 2 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the administration's emergency request to sequester the ballots, according to reports.
U.S. District Judge David Carter had told prosecutors that the remedy available to the federal government was to prosecute people after the fact rather than segregate ballots as they were returned, according to reports on the court proceedings. Prosecutors, in effect, took that path, announcing waves of charges before and after Election Day.
Federal investigators also issued grand jury subpoenas to Los Angeles County election officials in late October, seeking records related to suspected noncitizen registrations, according to reports based on Associated Press reporting. The officials were asked to appear before a grand jury on November 4, the day after Election Day. Receiving a subpoena does not mean an election official has been charged with a crime, and the Justice Department has not said whether any county employee will face charges.
California Officials Push Back on the 20,000-Person List
California officials have pushed back sharply on the federal government's claims about the voter list at the center of the dispute, and that disagreement is likely to shape how the cases are received.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has said the federal government has not shown a reliable basis for labeling the roughly 20,000 people on the list as noncitizens and has called the list too thin for election use, according to reports. The press office for Governor Gavin Newsom has likewise pushed back on claims of widespread voter fraud, according to reports on the November 2 announcement.
That dispute matters because the two sides are describing the same list in very different terms. Federal prosecutors present it as a pool of suspected noncitizens who registered to vote, and they say every defendant charged in the California operation appeared on it. State officials say the list has not been established as a reliable roster of noncitizens, let alone of people who voted illegally. Reporting on the cases has stressed that the allegations against the people on the federal list remain subject to verification, and that the investigation has not established that all 20,000 people are noncitizens or that they illegally voted.
The distinction between the list and the indictments is important. The list contains tens of thousands of names. The indictments name ten individuals, each accused of specific acts: registering under a false claim of citizenship, casting a ballot, and in several cases making false statements on naturalization paperwork. Those individual accusations will now be tested in court, where prosecutors must prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.
What This Means
For the Trump administration, the cases are evidence that its pre-election warnings about noncitizen voting were grounded in real prosecutions, not just rhetoric. The administration had already sued over the voter list, sought emergency Supreme Court intervention, and announced charges just before polls opened; the post-election indictments extend that effort.
For California officials, the same cases illustrate a different concern: that a disputed list, built without a publicly explained method, is being used to cast doubt on the state's elections. State leaders argue that federal authorities have shifted their own estimates and have not demonstrated that the list reliably identifies noncitizens. For voters, the practical takeaway is narrower than either side's rhetoric. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal under federal and California law, and the penalties for it can include prison time and consequences for any future citizenship application. The cases announced so far involve a small number of individuals relative to California's millions of registered voters. Whether they represent the tip of a larger problem or a set of isolated violations is precisely what the court cases, and the parallel civil litigation over the voter list, are meant to establish.
What Happens Next
The criminal cases will now move through the federal courts in California. Defendants in custody or already before the court will face arraignment and pretrial proceedings. If convicted, defendants could face prison time, with false statements on naturalization applications carrying a maximum potential sentence of five years in federal prison, according to reports.
The parallel civil fight over the voter list is also continuing. Court proceedings over the ballots and registration records are expected to go on, with another hearing scheduled for November 13, according to reports.
Prosecutors have signaled that more charges could follow. Essayli's message announcing the ten indictments was blunt: "Our work continues."
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