At the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles late Monday, several green card holders arrested in a crackdown on alleged California voter fraud expressed confusion over the charges — with some saying they had no recollection of registering to vote, as Trump administration officials accuse them of doing. Among them was Ana Domínguez, 60, a native of El Salvador living in Long Beach as a lawful permanent resident. Federal authorities accused her Monday of fraudulently registering to vote in July 2006 and then lying about it in her naturalization paperwork in March 2026.
Domínguez said she did not have any memory of registering to vote. Another man accused of the same crimes as Domínguez said the same: He wasn’t aware of ever registering to vote, as federal prosecutors claimed he had. Both were among the 28 people charged with federal election-related crimes Monday, including fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application.
Federal prosecutors and high-ranking Justice Department officials had touted the arrests during a news conference hours before as proof that California elections are corrupted by noncitizen voters — as President Trump has long alleged. State officials said the isolated instances of noncitizens voting, if accurate, are not evidence of widespread voter fraud. They also raised questions as to whether the charges could be trusted to be accurate — citing similar accusations being disproved elsewhere in the country.
Election experts have said many instances of noncitizens registering to vote are a result of administrative error or confusion on the part of the immigrant — not intentional criminality. Beforehand, more than a dozen of their loved ones milled around the federal courthouse in downtown L.A., antsy and clearly worried. One woman, her baby and young daughter in tow, struggled to find the right courtroom.
Another woman, Domínguez’s daughter, cried in the hallway as she waited for her mother’s case to get called up. When Domínguez moved to stand before the judge, she blew a kiss to her husband and daughter in the second row. She wore a black back brace and her legs were cuffed.
A third defendant — Omar Muñoz, 72, a lawful permanent resident from Belize whose arrest at his home in Commerce was captured by photographers in images transmitted around the world — shuffled into a court room shackled at the waist, his feet cuffed, still wearing the red and black pajama pants he’d been arrested in. Muñoz was charged with fraudulently registering to vote in September 2019, and then voting in 2020, twice in 2022 and again in 2024. He is also accused of lying on his application to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, when he claimed to have never falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen in the past.
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