The DOJ uses Operation Protect the Vote to terrorize California

By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso · October 21, 2026

The Department of Justice arrested residents like Omar Muñoz using flawed lists to purge voter rolls, a move that serves as political theater rather than a pursuit of justice.

Omar Muñoz is 72 years old. He is a lawful permanent resident from Commerce who has survived a heart murmur, diabetes, and neuropathy. He was recovering from a double knee replacement, a rotator cuff repair, and cervical surgery when federal agents arrived at his door. ABC7 Los Angeles reports that agents told him to open the door or they would break it down. They did not care that he was a fall risk. They handcuffed him and chained him at the legs and stomach. They held him for 10 hours in a room with a toilet and other people. For a whole day, his only food was an apple, a bottle of water, and a candy bar.

This is how the Department of Justice (DOJ) handles "voter fraud" under Operation Protect the Vote. It is not a surgical strike against criminals. It is a campaign of miedo designed to chill the breath of every immigrant in the state. The DOJ is wrong because it has traded the rule of law for the theater of the raid.

A list built on ghosts and guesses

The DOJ’s case rests on a list of 20,000 "likely noncitizen registrants." They demanded that California officials segregate ballots for these people. The Guardian reports that the DOJ compiled this list from private sources. When Los Angeles officials sampled people from that list, they found a disaster.

Aman Bhullar, an official in the Los Angeles clerk and recorder’s office, found that 38.9% of the sample were born in the United States. Another 71% of the sample had never even voted.

The DOJ is treating the voter roll like a target list. They match DMV records and citizenship applications to find "errors." But these are not errors of intent; they are errors of a broken bureaucracy.

The trap of the DMV checkbox

Take Verónica Bullene. She is a legal permanent resident in Petaluma. The Press Democrat reports that she told the DMV she was not a citizen. Later, she signed a voter registration form in Garberville and checked a box saying she was.

The DOJ calls this a crime. They are charging her with felonies that carry a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli argues that you have to "go out of your way" to register to vote. He claims it is not something that just happens to you.

That is the argument of a man who has never stood in a DMV line or felt the pressure of a government clerk rushing him through a form. Rick Hasen of the Safeguarding Democracy Project notes that people often register accidentally during DMV mistakes. There is only a crime if the government proves a willful violation.

The DOJ is not looking for willfulness. They are looking for a headline. They are weaponizing the confusion of the immigrant experience to build a case for a purge.

The old machinery of the sweep

We have seen this play before. This is the ghost of Operation Wetback. In 1954, the federal government used military-style sweeps to remove Mexican immigrants. It did not matter if they were undocumented or legal residents. Some were even U.S. citizens. The goal was not the law; the goal was the image of mass removal to satisfy a political appetite.

Operation Protect the Vote shares that same mechanism. It uses the shock of the arrest—the chains on a 72-year-old man, the threat of a decade in prison for a checkbox—to signal who is welcome in this country and who is a target.

The DOJ claims California is practicing "willful blindness" by not purging these lists. But Secretary of State Shirley Weber has been clear. She is committed to lawful elections, but she will not allow eligible voters to be disenfranchised by this administration.

The DOJ’s claims are not just cruel; they are proven failures. In July, the Department of Homeland Security told Nevada that 16,000 non-citizens were on its rolls. When Nevada officials actually investigated a list of 185 suspected non-citizens, they found that all 185 were citizens. The federal government is not "perfect," as Acting deputy attorney general R Trent McCotter admitted. They are dangerously wrong.

The Department of Justice is not protecting the vote; it is attacking the voter. By using flawed lists to arrest legal residents and threaten citizens, they have turned the legal system into a tool of intimidation. Justice would require the immediate dismissal of charges against people like Bullene and Muñoz and a full audit of the DHS methodology. Until then, this operation is nothing more than a political purge dressed up in a federal suit.

The DOJ uses Operation Protect the Vote to terrorize California

A list built on ghosts and guesses

The trap of the DMV checkbox

The old machinery of the sweep

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