DOJ orders San Diego to verify citizenship of 1,709 voters before Tuesday

The Department of Justice sent a letter to San Diego County Registrar of Voters Shawn Brom on Friday, one day before the midterm elections, demanding that his office verify the citizenship status of 1,709 registered voters within 48 hours. The directive came from U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon, who warned that if local officials count ballots from people identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming federal aiders and abettors to a crime.

This last-minute intervention marks a shift in how the administration is handling its long-standing focus on immigration and election integrity. While the White House has historically used immigration enforcement as a political tool, it is now using unsubstantiated claims about undocumented immigrants to directly interfere with the voting process in California. Other registrars across the state received similar letters, signaling a coordinated federal effort to challenge voter rolls under the guise of investigating fraud.

County Counsel Damon Brown pushed back against the federal move, accusing the Justice Department of attempting to unlawfully intimidate both election officials and California voters. Brown stated that the county would consider its own legal remedies and noted that Gordon failed to seek a judicial warrant because he lacked a sufficient evidentiary basis for the allegations. The county has begun examining random samples from the federal list and found that many individuals had already canceled their registrations, had no voting history, or appeared to be U.S. born.

The legal battle has already produced mixed results for the federal government. A federal appellate court recently rejected an emergency request to set aside the ballots of 20,000 California voters whom federal officials labeled as likely noncitizens. The 1,709 names in San Diego were part of that larger list. In a separate ruling, U.S. District Judge David Carter maintained that the administration sought to coerce state and local governments into abandoning their constitutional election procedures. Carter questioned why the Justice Department was suing state officials instead of indicting suspected individual fraudsters, noting that federal agents had recently arrested 28 people, including four in San Diego, on related charges.

The judicial push has occurred alongside a surge in federal immigration enforcement in San Diego, an operation reportedly named Operation Safe California. Immigration agents have been conducting field operations that critics describe as show-me-your-paper missions, often targeting people in their homes and public spaces. A judge recently ruled that these operations must be greatly restricted when conducted under the premise of uncovering voter fraud. Democratic Senator Alex Padilla and San Diego’s congressional delegation recently sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking more information about the operation.

The administration’s approach has drawn scrutiny from legal experts who note that the Justice Department’s research has often fallen apart under examination. The federal government has also issued grand jury subpoenas to at least three employees in the Los Angeles County registrar of voters office, requiring them to appear in court on Wednesday. These subpoenas add to a pattern of aggressive legal actions aimed at trimming voter rolls that states legally control.

The situation has prompted a quiet response from national security officials. According to The Washington Post, a group of current and former U.S. national security officials is advising state governments and members of Congress on how to prepare for potential federal meddling in the midterms. This advisory work comes as polls suggest Democrats have momentum in the House race, a scenario that some experts believe increases the likelihood of federal intervention to challenge the outcome.