Omar Muñoz, one of 11 people arrested in a US federal voter fraud crackdown in California, has denied registering to vote or casting a ballot as officials clash over allegations of widespread non-citizen voting.
Muñoz, 72, is a Belize-born lawful permanent resident who lives in Commerce, Los Angeles County. Federal prosecutors allege that he registered to vote in September 2019 and cast ballots in the 2020 election, twice in 2022 and again in 2024.
He was among 28 people charged across California in an operation dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote”. The allegations include falsely claiming US citizenship on voter registration forms, voting in federal elections and later giving misleading information on applications for naturalisation.
But when questioned after his arrest, Muñoz said he had never registered or voted.
“No, I didn’t register to vote,” he said. Asked whether he had ever cast a ballot, he replied: “No.”
Muñoz suggested that someone else could have used his name and Social Security number, citing a previous incident in which he said another person had used his identity. Asked whether his details could have been used to vote, he replied: “Could be.”
His family has also questioned whether investigators confused him with relatives who share his name, including a US-born son who is registered to vote. Muñoz’s daughter said the family was still trying to establish how his details had become linked to the allegations.
California voter fraud arrests intensify election dispute
The arrests have deepened a dispute between the Trump administration and California officials ahead of the 3 November 2026 general election. Federal authorities have separately demanded action over a list of about 20,000 people they say are likely to be non-citizens registered on the state’s voter rolls.
California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, said the federal government had not provided enough information to justify the demand and warned that eligible voters could be wrongly removed. State officials have also pointed to earlier claims that as many as 190,000 non-citizens might be on the rolls, saying those figures were unsupported.
The Justice Department has sued California in an attempt to force officials to set aside ballots linked to people on the federal list while their citizenship is checked. Federal prosecutors say the latest charges demonstrate the need for closer scrutiny of the state’s registration system.
Los Angeles County said in a court filing that it reviewed a sample of 200 names from the federal list and found that nearly 40 per cent had indicated they were born in the United States, raising questions about the accuracy of the data.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has said illegal voting should be prosecuted where it occurs, but that 28 cases among roughly 23 million registered voters do not establish widespread fraud.
Federal prosecutors maintain that the defendants knowingly broke election and immigration laws. The Department of Justice has stressed that the charges remain allegations and that all those accused are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
For Muñoz, the arrest has become a source of bewilderment as the wider political dispute continues. “Politics is a nice chess game if you know how to play,” he said. “Unfortunately, they used me as one of their props.”
