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Federal prosecutors have served grand jury subpoenas on the Los Angeles County election office, moving the Justice Department’s noncitizen voting push from a civil lawsuit it just lost into a criminal investigation of how the county screens voters.
Grand jury subpoenas have reached California election officials as the Justice Department widens its criminal inquiry into noncitizen voting, CBS News and Reuters reported Oct. 29. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office received at least three subpoenas, sent between Oct. 21 and Oct. 24, CBS reported, and they seek records on how the county screens for “unlawful voting by aliens,” any evidence it has gathered about noncitizen voters, and its correspondence with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter on the subject. Reuters, which also reviewed copies, said prosecutors want records on the county’s efforts to keep such ballots from being counted and on how it answered Justice Department letters this month warning election officials of possible criminal exposure.
The timing is the story. On Oct. 28, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter refused the department’s request to make California set aside mail ballots from about 20,000 voters the government had matched to immigration records, and pointed it toward the criminal statute instead. A Justice Department spokesperson told CBS that criminal action was “the next logical step” after that ruling, while maintaining that a civil remedy remains available and that “noncitizen voting is properly addressed through criminal law.” The department declined to comment on the subpoenas themselves. Reuters said it was not clear whether the county office is a focus of the investigation.
County officials read the subpoenas as pressure. “At every step, the US Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach,” Registrar Dean Logan said in a statement reported by Reuters, adding that election officials “are acting in accordance with state and federal law.” At a hearing Oct. 27, Carter told government lawyers it “would be wise that any threats to state and county election employees cease immediately,” Reuters reported.
The scale of the prosecutions is growing. McCotter said Oct. 29 that the department has charged 156 immigrants with voting or registering to vote unlawfully ahead of the midterms and has used subpoenas to state and local election officials to build those cases, according to Reuters. That is more than triple the 48 defendants in the department’s Oct. 26 roundup, 47 of whom were green card holders. On the same day, the department announced 18 new indictments in North Carolina, bringing that state’s 2026 total to 30.
What the records request signals. A grand jury subpoena for a county’s internal files is a records demand, and on its face it does not accuse the officials who receive it. Its practical use is to trace how individual voters on the federal list registered and whether they cast ballots, the facts a prosecutor must prove person by person under 18 U.S.C. 611. That is the same proof Carter said the government should bring, rather than holding ballots in bulk. The likely effect is a steady flow of individual cases after the Nov. 3 election, built partly on county records.
For permanent residents whose names are on the federal list, the immigration stakes are larger than the criminal ones. Unlawful voting is a separate ground of deportation under 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(6), registering as a citizen can be treated as a false claim to citizenship, and either can block naturalization on moral character grounds. Both the criminal statute and the deportation ground carry a narrow exception for someone who reasonably believed they were a citizen, had citizen parents and lived in the United States permanently before age 16. Because the list was built from immigration records that may be out of date, some names may belong to people who have since naturalized, the concern behind the voter samples reviewed in the case before Carter.
Still pending are the government’s Ninth Circuit appeal of the ballot ruling, whether subpoenas reach other California counties or the secretary of state, and how many of the 156 cases end in convictions, a number the department has not reported. Related coverage: the lawsuit over USCIS’s Unlawful Voter Initiative and charges built on N-400 answers.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: CBS News, “California election officials face grand jury subpoenas as DOJ expands voting investigation” (Oct. 29, 2026); Reuters, “Trump DOJ issues subpoenas in California noncitizen voting probe” (Oct. 29, 2026); Order Denying Temporary Restraining Order, United States v. California, No. 2:26-cv-12025 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 28, 2026); Justice Department, “Justice Department Charges 18 More in North Carolina with Illegally Voting in 2024 Election” (Oct. 29, 2026); 18 U.S.C. 611; 8 U.S.C. 1227.
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