DOJ Publicizes Arrest of 72-Year-Old Omar Muñoz in 28-Person California Voter Fraud Case
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Oct 23
DOJ Publicizes Arrest of 72-Year-Old Omar Muñoz in 28-Person California Voter Fraud Case
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Oct 23
Summary
Six law-enforcement vehicles, a helicopter and cameras accompanied the pre-dawn Los Angeles arrest of Omar Muñoz, 72, a green-card holder later charged with unlawful voter registration and false statements about voting.
A Justice Department video posted the next day turned Muñoz into the public face of a California crackdown that has charged 28 noncitizens, with experts calling the militarized arrest and promotional rollout extraordinary for a nonviolent election case.
Muñoz said he had undergone six recent surgeries, fell twice in custody and was later found by doctors to have possible spinal disruption, while his family said the operation left him shaking and with high blood pressure.
The case sits inside a broader Trump administration push ahead of the midterms: about 40 people have been charged nationwide in recent weeks and roughly 170 since the start of Trump’s second term, even as studies say noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare.
California is also fighting a DOJ lawsuit over 20,000 alleged noncitizens on voter rolls, a tiny share of the state’s more than 23 million registered voters, with state officials saying federal data wrongly flagged citizens and already-cancelled registrations.
Can database matching algorithms accurately identify noncitizens without risking the disenfranchisement of legally naturalized voters right before an election?
What happens when state election officials face federal criminal charges for refusing to use unverified data from a thumb drive?