admin
The latest courtroom fireworks in the fight over noncitizen voters in California landed squarely on a sworn declaration from the Department of Homeland Security. In plain English: a top USCIS official says his agency reviewed immigration records tied to a 200-person sample from Los Angeles County and found none of the matched names were born in the United States. That claim directly contradicts the county’s own sworn sample, which said nearly 39% of the same group listed U.S. birthplaces. This is not a disagreement about feelings — it’s a clash of sworn statements and the integrity of our election rolls.
What the USCIS sworn declaration actually says
Nicolas Bartell, Associate Director for Fraud Detection and National Security at USCIS, filed a declaration for the Department of Justice stating that USCIS reviewed immigration records for the individuals it matched to Los Angeles County’s 200-person sample. His finding: “none of the individuals USCIS matched to the County’s Sample List were born in the United States according to USCIS records.” That declaration supports the Justice Department’s request for an emergency order to segregate and verify ballots tied to DHS’s so-called October List of just over 20,000 registrations the feds say are “highly likely” to be noncitizens.
How Los Angeles County answered — and why their number looks different
Los Angeles County didn’t take this lying down. Aman Bhullar, the county’s assistant registrar, filed a sworn declaration describing the county’s review of a 200-record sample from the federal list. The county reported that among records with usable birthplace information, 38.9% indicated U.S. birth. They also noted many registrations were canceled, most had no voting history, and only a minority were mailed ballots this year. So you have two sworn papers telling different stories — but they may not be measuring exactly the same slices of data, which matters a lot.
Why both sides can be technically right — and why that’s not comforting
Here’s the nerdy but necessary part: the government’s USCIS matches and the county’s “meaningfully reported” birthplace entries are not identical measures. USCIS looked at records it could match to federal immigration files; the county looked at birthplace fields on voter records. Different data, different coverage, different conclusions. Still, a federal agency under oath says its matched records show zero U.S.-born individuals. That is a heavy claim when federal lawyers are asking a judge to mark certain ballots for verification so legal votes aren’t diluted.
The legal posture and the political stakes
The Ninth Circuit recently tossed the emergency appeal for lack of jurisdiction and sent the dispute back to the district court, so this fight is not over. The DOJ asked a district judge to require California and Los Angeles County to set aside ballots associated with the October List while citizenship checks proceed. California insists it has legal and operational limits on segregating ballots once processing runs, and officials say they rely heavily on registrants’ attestations. Translation: L.A. is asking us to trust the honor system with our elections. That should make everyone, regardless of party, uneasy.
Bottom line: sworn declarations from the federal government now directly contradict a county’s sworn sample. The technical differences in how each side matched records matter, but so does the bigger question: should ballots linked to a federal list of likely noncitizens be frozen and verified to protect lawful voters? If you care about secure elections, this is the fight to watch in the district court. If you prefer believing that every registration is magically perfect, enjoy your faith-based voting system — the rest of us will demand facts under oath and ballots that can be trusted.
