Bill Essayli turns DOJ threats on California election workers

By Alma Cordero · Reporting from El Paso · October 25, 2026

By threatening local officials over flawed voter lists, Bill Essayli and federal prosecutors are using fear to sabotage democratic participation before midterms.

When two Department of Homeland Security officers walked into the Napa County registrar's office late on a Friday afternoon, they were not there to help. They came to deliver a threat. For Registrar John Tuteur, the visit signaled that the federal government turned his office into a battlefield. This is how the Trump administration operates. It finds a civil servant and tells them they sit one mistake away from a prison cell.

The threat in the front office

The Department of Justice sent letters to at least 18 California counties. The demand was simple and brutal. Local officials had a 48-hour deadline to identify and sequester ballots from suspected noncitizens. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli did not mince words. He warned that "any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy."

This is not about the law. It is about miedo. The DOJ is targeting roughly 20,000 people they call "likely" noncitizen voters. But when you look at the actual names, the security argument falls apart. According to The Korea Herald, a sample of names revealed a disaster.

This is an estafa. The federal government uses a list of ghosts and citizens to rattle the people who run our elections.

The theater of the few

To make the lie feel like a fact, the DOJ needs faces for the cameras. Federal authorities charged 28 people with illegally registering to vote. These people are lawful permanent residents. By arresting a handful of individuals, the DOJ pretends it found a plague.

This is the same mechanism as Operation Streamline. Back then, the government used mass criminal charges against migrants to expedite removals. Now, they use a few indictments to justify a broad sweep of the voter rolls. It is a performance designed to make the public believe the system is broken so officials can remove voters.

We have seen this play before. This matches the Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census, inserting citizenship verification into an administrative process to create a chilling effect and disenfranchise noncitizens and their families. Whether on a census form or a mail-in ballot, the goal is to make the gente afraid to interact with the state.

The pattern of the fence

The DOJ claims this protects the voting rights of citizens. Kiersten Pels, a DOJ spokesperson, says they want the most secure election in California history. Bill Essayli argues that noncitizen voting dilutes the vote.

If you believe them, you have a short memory. In July, Donald Trump claimed Nevada had 1,500 noncitizen voters. When the truth came out, the actual number of registered noncitizens was zero. The DOJ is not hunting for fraud; they are manufacturing it.

This is the same spirit as Arizona Senate Bill 1070, where profiling was rebranded as law enforcement. It is the same logic as the Zero Tolerance Policy, where administrative rules forbid discretion and punish without exception. It is the same aggression as Operation Lone Star, where security forces deployed to police border communities.

The historical record shows that targeting suspected noncitizens only increases fear. As reported by The Guardian, Attorney General Rob Bonta called this a weaponization of the law. He is right.

The DOJ is not worried about the more than 23 million registered voters in California. They are worried about the mail-in ballots already counted across the state. They are trying to create a cloud of doubt over the midterms.

The DOJ bets that county clerks will be too scared to do their jobs. They bet that immigrant communities will see arrests and stay home. They use the law as a fence to keep people away from the ballot box.

The DOJ's effort is a calculated act of voter intimidation. By threatening civil servants and arresting lawful residents based on flawed data, Bill Essayli and the Trump administration attempt to sabotage the midterms before certification. Justice requires that officials ignore these threats and count every vote. The federal government is not securing the vote; it is attempting to steal the peace of the democratic process.

Bill Essayli turns DOJ threats on California election workers

The threat in the front office

The theater of the few

The pattern of the fence

Sources