距离中期选举仅剩八天，特朗普政府就所谓非公民投票问题对各州的威胁已达到顶点，司法部官员声称此类案件在加利福尼亚州已升至“紧急”程度。
The Trump administration’s threats against states over alleged noncitizen voting have reached a crescendo just eight days from the midterm elections, with Justice Department officials claiming such cases have risen to “emergency” proportions in California.
但MS NOW发现，在加州乃至全美范围内，基于非公民投票指控的联邦起诉数量仍然很低。
But MS NOW has found the number of federal prosecutions based on allegations of noncitizen voting remains low in the state — and around the country.
选举日三周前，司法部向加州送去一个受密码保护的U盘，其中列出了超过2万名它认为在该州登记投票的非公民。
Three weeks before Election Day, the Justice Department sent California a password-protected thumb drive that identified more than 20,000 individuals it believed to be noncitizens registered to vote in the state.
随U盘一同送达的还有一项警告：司法部要追究的不只是非公民投票者；任何参与统计该选票的人——包括州官员或投票站工作人员——都将被视为协助和教唆，并承担刑事责任。
The delivery came with a warning: it wasn’t just a noncitizen voter the DOJ would come after; anyone who had participated in tabulating that ballot — including state officials or poll workers — would be seen as aiding and abetting and criminally liable.
上周，司法部和国土安全部官员在洛杉矶宣布对28名合法永久居民提起刑事诉讼，官员称这些人每人都出现在联邦列出的2万名可能在加州登记投票的非公民名单上。
And last week, DOJ and Homeland Security officials were in Los Angeles to announce 28 criminal cases against lawful permanent residents, each of whom, officials said, appear on the federal list of 20,000 likely noncitizens registered in California.
但司法部宣布的这28起案件仅占国土安全部所称在加州登记投票的2万名“可能非公民”的略高于千分之一，这凸显出特朗普的司法部在该州针对非公民提起选举相关刑事指控的频率之低。换句话说：在加州被起诉的这28人仅占该州2300万登记选民的0.0001%。
But the 28 cases announced by the DOJ represent just over one-tenth of one percent of the 20,000 “likely noncitizens” who DHS claims are registered to vote in California, which highlights how infrequently Trump’s DOJ has filed criminal charges against noncitizens for election-related crimes in the state. Put another way: The 28 individuals charged in California represent .0001% of the state’s 23 million registered voters.
MS NOW对已公开的起诉文件的审查还显示，司法部官员在新闻发布会上和社交媒体上大肆宣扬的某些选举相关指控似乎已被悄然撤销。
An MS NOW review of the charging documents that have been made publicly available also reveals that some of the election-related charges loudly touted by DOJ officials in press conferences and on social media appear to have been quietly dropped.
在周五发给地方县选举官员的另一封威胁信中，司法部继续声称他们“起诉了28名非法投票和登记罪名的外国人”。联邦法院记录显示，在五份加利福尼亚州刑事起诉书中，“欺诈性选民登记”的指控被红线划掉，并标有提起起诉的国土安全调查局（HSI）特工的姓名首字母缩写。
In another threatening letter to local county election officials on Friday the Justice Department continued to claim they charged “28 aliens for unlawful voting and registration offenses.”Federal court records show that in five of the California criminal complaints, the charge for “fraudulent voter registration” has been crossed out with a red line, with the initials of the corresponding Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent who brought the complaint.
前司法部检察官萨曼莎·特雷佩尔审阅了部分起诉文件后表示，这五人现在似乎仅被指控在入籍申请中宣誓作虚假陈述，而不再被指控非法登记投票或投票。
Those five individuals now appear to be charged only with the crime of making a false statement under oath in a naturalization application, not with unlawfully registering to vote or voting, said Samantha Trepel, a former Justice Department prosecutor, who reviewed some of the charging documents.
在阅读了HSI特工提交的起诉文件后，曾在移民与海关执法局（ICE）国土安全调查局工作20多年的埃里克·巴利耶特告诉MS NOW，根据他的经验，监督其中部分案件的联邦法官很可能已驳回了与选举相关的指控。
After reading the charging documents filed by the HSI agents, Eric Balliet, who spent more than 20 years at ICE on Homeland Security Investigations, told MS NOW that based on his experience the federal judge overseeing some of the cases likely struck down the election-related charges.
“事实与透明度至关重要。如果法官在提交给他们的选民欺诈案件中，近五分之一都认定不存在充分的合理根据，那便是一个问题，”巴利耶特说。他曾在多届政府中任职于国土安全部，包括特朗普首个任期期间。“这表明《联邦刑事诉讼规则》依然完好无损。”
“Facts and transparency matter. If judges are not finding sufficient probable cause exists in nearly one in five of the voter fraud cases that are presented to them, then that is a problem,” said Balliet, who served at the Department of Homeland Security across multiple administrations, including during Trump’s first term. “That shows the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure remains intact.”
巴利耶特补充说，在此阶段撤销与选举相关的指控“显示出负责调查的特工对犯罪构成要件缺乏了解”，并指出这并非国土安全调查局（HSI）特工的过错，因为“他们从未接受过关于追究这些指控所需条件的培训或法律指导”。
Balliet added that the dropped election-related charges at this stage “shows a lack of familiarity of the elements of the crime that the agents are investigating,” adding that it’s not the fault of the HSI agents as “they were never trained or provided legal guidance on what is required to pursue these charges.”
司法部日后仍可在这些案件中恢复与选举相关的指控。但当被问及为何在部分案件中撤销与投票相关的指控时，司法部发言人基尔斯滕·佩尔斯并未给出直接回答。“这28名非公民已因联邦罪行在刑事诉状中被起诉，”佩尔斯说。“司法部每周都在提起更多选举欺诈案件。”在公开宣布的28起案件中，有8起无法通过联邦记录检索到，截至发稿时无法核实。
The Justice Department could bring back the election-related charges in those cases at a later date. But asked why the voting-related charges were dropped in some of the cases, Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels did not provide a direct answer. “The 28 non-citizens were charged in criminal complaints with federal crimes,” Pels said. “The Department is bringing more election fraud cases every week.”Of the 28 publicly announced cases, eight are unavailable through a federal records search and unable to be verified as of publication.
在加利福尼亚州宣布的刑事诉状数量相对极少，这代表了一个全国性趋势；《MS NOW》对法庭记录的审查发现，从2026年9月初到10月中旬，特朗普政府已以非公民非法登记或投票为由起诉了105人。
The relatively minuscule number of criminal complaints announced in California represents a nationwide trend; An MS NOW review of court records found that between early September 2026 and mid-October, the Trump administration has charged 105 people with illegally registering or voting as a noncitizen.
这一微小的数字也直接与特朗普总统关于非公民大规模选民欺诈的虚假言论相矛盾。民权律师和前司法部官员警告称，特朗普频繁提出关于非公民投票的毫无根据的指控，作为声称中期选举针对共和党被操纵的借口，以及可能进行联邦干预的理由。
And that small number also directly contradicts President Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud by noncitizens. Trump has made frequent unfounded claims about noncitizen voting as pretext for claiming the midterm elections are rigged against Republicans, and justification for possible federal interference, civil rights attorneys and former DOJ officials have warned.
专家们表示，由特朗普前私人律师掌管的司法部，也在试图恐吓各州剥夺有色人种选民的投票权。根据目前公开的记录，在加州被起诉的28人中，大多数来自拥有大量非白人人口的国家。
And the Justice Department, run by Trump’s former personal lawyer, those experts say, is also attempting to intimidate states into disenfranchising voters of color. Based on the records publicly available so far, the majority of the 28 charged in California were from countries with significant non-white populations.
“这个政府只有一个目标——压制他们视为可牺牲的黑人和拉美裔选民的投票权，”全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）总法律顾问、前司法部民权司助理司法部长克里斯滕·克拉克对MS NOW表示。“历史上，司法部一直专注于执行《投票权法案》。”根据党派和非党派组织的研究，非公民投票极其罕见，从未改变过选举结果。过往的定罪也很少；传统基金会的一个数据库显示，2000年至2025年间，全美仅有71起非公民非法投票的刑事定罪。
“This administration has one goal only — suppress the votes of Black and Latino voters who they deem expendable,” Kristen Clarke, general counsel for the NAACP and former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Justice Department, told MS NOW. “Historically, the Justice Department has focused on enforcing the Voting Rights Act.”Noncitizen voting is extremely rare and has never swayed the outcome of an election, according to research from both partisan and nonpartisan organizations. Past convictions are also rare; a Heritage Foundation database found that between 2000 and 2025 there were 71 criminal convictions of noncitizens unlawfully voting nationwide.
当被问及司法部是否担心其行动可能导致美国公民被剥夺选举权——因为一些人已被特朗普政府列出的涉嫌非公民名单错误计入在内——司法部发言人佩尔斯回答“不”。
Asked if the DOJ is worried its actions could result in the disenfranchisement of American citizens — as some have already been incorrectly counted in the Trump administration’s lists of alleged noncitizens — Pels, the DOJ spokesperson said “no.”
“司法部为保护今年选举公正性而采取的每一项行动都有法律依据，并在公开法庭上进行诉讼，”佩尔斯说。“确保只有合格公民投票，且每一张合法选票都被计数。”司法部毫不掩饰将加州作为目标，提起新诉讼指控该州无视联邦政府的紧急要求，未核实2万名人员的公民身份，拒绝向他们邮寄选票，并将已退回的选票隔离处理。
“Every action the Department has taken to protect the integrity of this year’s elections is grounded in the law and being litigated in open court,” Pels said. “Ensuring that only eligible citizens vote and that every lawful ballot is counted.”The Justice Department has made no secret of California being in its crosshairs, filing a new lawsuit alleging that the state has ignored the federal government’s urgent requests that it verify the citizenship of the 20,000 individuals, refuse to mail them ballots and segregate any that are returned.
第九巡回上诉法院的一个三法官合议庭于周日下午举行了一次罕见的听证会，审理司法部要求加利福尼亚州隔离选票的请求，司法部声称这些选票来自涉嫌非公民选民。这家联邦上诉法院的法官似乎准备驳回司法部的这一努力。加利福尼亚州圣安娜的一名联邦法官已将该诉讼的听证会定于本周举行。
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held a rare Sunday afternoon hearing on DOJ’s demand that California segregate ballots the administration claims are from alleged noncitizens. The judges on the federal appeals court appeared ready to reject the Justice Department’s effort. A federal judge in Santa Ana, California has scheduled a hearing on the lawsuit for this week.
在MS NOW的追问下，司法部并未直接回答为何等待数月才向加州发送任何涉嫌非公民名单。司法部最早于7月指控加州选民名册上有超过19万潜在非公民，但直到10月13日才向该州发送具体人员名单。
Pressed on the timing by MS NOW, the Justice Department did not directly answer why it waited for months to send California any list of suspected noncitizens to the state. The DOJ first alleged in July that California has more than 190,000 potential noncitizens on its voter rolls but did not send a list of individuals to the state until Oct. 13.
司法部发言人佩尔斯声称，这2万名涉嫌非公民是“迄今为止已人工核实的”，并补充说“这个数字还可以而且将会增加”。但特雷佩尔表示，迄今为止在加州和全国范围内提起的指控数量很少，与上届总统大选中超过1.5亿美国人投票的数字相比，“表明非公民投票并非普遍问题”。特雷佩尔曾在共和党和民主党政府时期均担任司法部民权司检察官。
The 20,000 alleged noncitizens are the ones that “have been manually verified to date,” Pels, the Justice Department spokesperson claimed, adding “that number can and will go up.”But the small number of charges brought to date in California and across the country compared to the more than 150 million Americans who voted in the last presidential election “shows that noncitizen voting is not a widespread problem,” said Trepel, who served as a Justice Department prosecutor in the civil rights division across Republican and Democratic administrations.
“各州已经设有多重保障措施，以确保只有符合资格的公民才能投票，且仍然没有证据表明非公民投票对选举诚信构成实质性威胁，”特雷佩尔说。“夸大该问题的做法有损公众对选举的信心，并可能被用来为将符合资格的选民从名册中除名提供理由。” 司法部本身已多次承认，其正在编制的用于核实个人选民资格的新公民名单并不完美，可能存在错误。
今年早些时候，一名司法部律师表示，“当然，负责任的州不会拿走”政府的公民名单，“然后立即或自动将选民名册上所有未出现在该名单上的人全部除名”，这是根据《MS NOW》审阅的法庭记录所述。
“States already have multiple safeguards in place to ensure only eligible citizens can vote, and there continues to be no evidence that noncitizen voting poses a meaningful threat to election integrity,” said Trepel. “Efforts to exaggerate the issue risk undermining public confidence in our elections and could be used to justify removing eligible voters from the rolls.”The Justice Department itself has repeatedly admitted that the new citizenship lists it’s creating to verify a person’s voter eligibility are not perfect, and could have errors Earlier this year, a Justice Department attorney said “certainly a responsible state would not take” the government’s citizenship lists “and then immediately or automatically throw off every single person on their voter rolls who does not appear on that list,” according to a court transcript reviewed by MS NOW.
而在上周的一次新闻发布会上，代理副司法部长特伦特·麦科特作出了类似的承认，称“名单上可能有一些名字，最终证明他们是公民。我们不是完美的。”“这些是我们相当有把握认定为非公民的人，”麦科特说。
And during a press conference last week, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, made a similar admission, saying “there may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens. We’re not perfect.”“These are the ones where we’re kind of the most confident that they are noncitizens,” McCotter said.
加利福尼亚州最高联邦检察官比尔·埃萨伊利将司法部对加州提起的诉讼描述为“一起紧急情况，我们期待法院也如此对待”。
The top federal prosecutor in California, Bill Essayli, described the department’s lawsuit against California as “an emergency and we expect the courts to treat it as such.”
与此同时，白宫继续为追查非公民选民辩护。白宫发言人称之为“保护我们选举的决定性合法行动”。
Meanwhile, the White House continues to defend the noncitizen voter hunt. A White House spokesperson called it “decisive lawful action to protect our elections.”
戴维·贝克尔曾是司法部律师，如今为全国各地的共和党和民主党选举官员提供咨询。他说，特朗普政府之所以针对加州并散布关于非公民选民普遍舞弊的虚假叙事，是因为“他们尝试的每件事都在失败。这是绝望之举，而且注定会失败”。
David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who now advises Republican and Democratic election officials across the country, said the Trump administration is targeting California and spinning a false narrative about widespread noncitizen voter fraud because “they are failing at everything they try. This is desperation and it will fail.”
贝克尔说：“本届政府花了21个月时间，动用联邦政府的所有资源，试图制造证据来支持总统关于非公民普遍投票的谎言。在这段时间里，他们只起诉了几十人。每当他们的说法受到审视，就会土崩瓦解，暴露出名单上只有极少数非公民是意外混入的。”加州官员则质疑司法部提供的数据是否真的可核实，甚至是否可用。
“This administration has spent 21 months using all of the resources of the federal government to try to manufacture evidence to support the president’s lies about widespread noncitizen voting,” said Becker. “In all that time they have charged only a few dozen. Every time their claims are subjected to scrutiny, they fall apart, revealing an infinitesimally small number of noncitizens accidentally on the lists.”California officials, for their part, have questioned whether the data supplied by DOJ is, in fact, verifiable or even usable.
其他州关于选民名册上有非公民的说法也很快不攻自破，内华达州就是一例——根据内华达州官员向MS NOW提供的该州官员与国土安全部官员之间的邮件往来，特朗普政府指控的每一名被列为非公民的选民名册上的人，实际上都是公民。
Claims of noncitizens on voter rolls in other states have quickly fallen apart, as in the case of Nevada which found every person the Trump administration accused of being a noncitizen on its voter rolls, was in fact a citizen, according to email exchanges between Nevada officials and DHS officials provided to MS NOW.
在洛杉矶县，司法部声称有超过7000名非公民登记投票，但选举官员发现，名单上有些人的出生地列在美国，这是他们可能是公民的有力迹象。洛杉矶县选民登记官迪恩·洛根说，在对这份疑似非公民名单进行抽样调查时，他们还发现有些人没有投票记录，另一些人则已取消了自己的选民登记。
In Los Angeles County, where the Justice Department claims more than 7,000 noncitizens are registered to vote, the election officials found that some of the people on the list have a listed birthplace in the United States, a strong indicator they could be citizens. In a sampling of the suspected noncitizen list, LA County County Registrar Dean Logan said they also found that some had no voting history and others had cancelled their voter registrations.
不过，司法部长托德·布兰奇周四告诉记者，司法部并未排除在选举前对其他州采取法律行动的可能性。
Still, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters on Thursday that the Justice Department has not ruled out pursuing legal action against other states before the election.
“我们正在关注多个州，”布兰奇说。他声称，“不当干预选举”或州的认证程序“从来都不是我们的意图”。
“There’s a number of states that we’re looking at,” Blanche said. He claimed that it’s “never our intention, to improperly interfere with elections” or a state certification process.
“但你知道，要说我们在任何情况下都绝不会那样做，”布兰奇补充道，“当然，我不会这么说。”
“But you know, to say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that,” Blanche added. “Of course, I’m not going to say that.”
这篇题为《随着司法部加大对加利福尼亚州非公民投票的威胁力度，该州乃至全国提起的案件数量仍然很少》的文章来自MS NOW
The post As the DOJ amps up threats against noncitizen voting in California, the number of cases brought there — and around the country — remains low MS NOW