Justice Department promotional video drew criticism before indictment
DHS investigators arrested Omar Muñoz at his home in Commerce, California, in the early morning Monday as they investigated allegations that the 72-year-old lawful permanent resident fraudulently registered to vote and made false statements in a citizenship application in which he claimed never to have voted. A Department of Homeland Security agent alleges that he cast ballots several times since 2020. At his lawyer’s advice, Muñoz declined to comment on the specific fraud claims while the charges were pending.
Muñoz said he was getting ready for his morning coffee just after 5 a.m. Monday when he heard a loud bang at the front door. He recalled someone outside yelling, “Open up or else we’ll break down the door, and it’ll be bad for you,” before he saw officers in police vests and opened the door. When they told him to put his hands up, he said, he explained that six recent surgeries had left him frail, and said something to the effect of, “I can’t walk fast, I can’t take long steps, to enter a car is painful.” The officers nonetheless handcuffed him, he said, and when he stepped into the street he saw about six law-enforcement cars and cameras filming.
Associated Press photographs show officers, some wearing helmets, masks and shields, walking a shackled Muñoz in the red pajama pants he had slept in. A helicopter flew above his street, which had already been taped off, he said: “It was staged and I’m the patsy … They wanted to make a scene.” At the time, Muñoz said he had no idea why he was being detained; he later learned he was one of 28 green card holders in California charged by the Trump administration with allegedly registering to vote unlawfully.
Muñoz said he fell twice as he struggled to stand while being transported to a federal processing facility in downtown Los Angeles, and that more cameras awaited him there. While he waited to be brought into court, he said, officers placed additional chains around his waist and feet: “It was so tight, I could barely walk and I was hurting.” Muñoz said he suffers from bone disease and nerve pain and that the shackles exacerbated his problems: “The pain just progressed more and more.” He was eventually given an apple and candy bar, he said, his only food for the day.
His family showed up at court to support him, and he was released later Monday. At that point, he said, he saw the news coverage and better understood why the government had put him in the spotlight: “This is about a fight between Trump and the Democrats.”
The publicity shocked democracy and constitutional-law experts who closely follow such cases. The Justice Department posted an edited video of the arrest to its X account the next day, set to an upbeat rock song and captioned “OPERATION PROTECT THE VOTE,” with Muñoz’s face blurred; clips showed neighbors looking on and officers escorting him before his first court appearance. Those experts said it was extraordinary for the federal government to launch a heavy-handed operation to detain someone accused of a nonviolent voting offense, and stunning to see the Justice Department directly release a propaganda-style video, particularly before the defendant had been indicted.
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola law school in Los Angeles and a former deputy assistant attorney general, said, “It’s disgusting.” He added, “There’s no point other than partisan politics behind that sizzle reel. And DoJ is supposed to be forbidden from engaging in partisan politics in their enforcement actions.” Levitt said the Justice Department’s video was designed to confuse the public about the prevalence of voter fraud. “The government wants the circus, because they like the circus. And that is wildly improper, because we pay for that,” he said.
Sergio Perez, a civil-rights lawyer and former Justice Department attorney, said, “These folks are clearly not flight risks and weren’t accused of violent acts.” He added, “To enter into residential neighborhoods with this degree of militarized approach is unheard of.” Perez, who worked as a Justice Department observer during the 2012 election, said the department historically investigated claims of improper voting but would not approach those cases theatrically, and that prosecutors would not bring charges in the heat of campaign season, in an effort to avoid any appearance of meddling in elections.
One former Justice Department attorney said pursuing highly politicized cases during campaign season, particularly two weeks before a midterm election, was a significant departure from the department’s norms, with prosecutors traditionally avoiding actions that could be perceived as trying to influence the contests. Defense lawyers said that in cases such as Muñoz’s, prosecutors would typically coordinate with federal defenders to have the defendants appear for a hearing.
The Justice Department charged 28 California defendants in the operation. Muñoz and others charged in the Central District of California, which covers Los Angeles, face felonies carrying maximum five-year prison sentences, while defendants charged in the Eastern District, which covers the Central Valley region, face misdemeanors carrying maximum one-year sentences. Green card holders have legal status in the United States but are ineligible to vote.
The arrests come as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to criminally charge noncitizen voters ahead of the midterm elections. In its report of the arrests, The Guardian characterized that push as intended in part to create the impression that voter fraud is rampant, while several studies have shown it is exceedingly rare. According to Seamus Hughes, who runs the legal-news website Court Watch, the administration charged 40 people across the United States in recent weeks and about 170 since the start of Trump’s second term. More than 230 million people were registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election, according to the US Election Assistance Commission. Voting-rights advocates have raised concerns that the Trump administration was trying to sow doubt about the integrity of the elections in the lead-up to the high-stakes midterms.
The Justice Department has also sued California, alleging that 20,000 noncitizens remained on the state’s voter rolls and demanding that the state be blocked from tabulating certain ballots the department claimed might belong to noncitizens. The alleged group represents a small fraction of the more than 23 million registered voters in California. State officials rejected the federal claims, saying the Justice Department had wrongly flagged US citizens and people whose voter registrations had already been canceled as potential ineligible voters.
Experts said rare cases of noncitizens registering to vote often result from confusion: some people do not know they are ineligible, and others believe they can vote if someone offers them a chance to. California is one of 24 states with automatic voter registration, a system that registers people when they interact with certain state agencies unless they opt out. Several people arrested in the California operation expressed confusion about the allegations: one said he mistakenly believed he could vote, another said she had no recollection of registering and another denied voting.
The Justice Department did not respond to inquiries about Muñoz’s case or its media strategy. A DHS spokesperson declined to answer questions about Muñoz because the department does not comment on active investigations, but said DHS was “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.” The spokesperson warned that noncitizens who vote would face consequences including criminal charges and deportation. Muñoz’s lawyer declined to comment, and Los Angeles election officials did not respond to questions about his alleged voting record.
Muñoz, originally from Belize, said he had lived in the United States for more than 50 years and has 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. He retired in 2019 after a range of careers, including installing alarms and caretaking for people with disabilities, he said. Speaking Wednesday on a bench outside the front door of his home in Commerce, an industrial city just outside downtown Los Angeles, he said, “I’m a strong person, but I’m not doing well.” He added: “They had me dragged all throughout the media. They wanted to make a spectacle out of me.”
Muñoz’s daughter, nurse Lliani Orantes, said doctors saw discs in his spine appearing to be out of line near the area of his recent surgery, and that he was experiencing full-body tremors and high blood pressure. “It’s hurtful he has to go through this,” Orantes said.
Muñoz said the government could have sent him a letter or dispatched one or two officers to his door without much fanfare. “I understand they have an allegation against me, that’s their job, but it’s the manner that they did this to me,” he said. “There were so many officers. How much taxpayer money went into that?” He also said, “The news portrays it as if I’m already guilty.”
Muñoz said he had not contemplated the idea of going to prison. “Living with your wife for more than 50 years and being in there and not knowing anything, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do. Would I die in there?”
Wendy Weiser, vice-president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the prosecution a public-relations campaign. “This is all part of this PR campaign,” she said. Weiser was skeptical that the campaign would succeed because of broader awareness of the administration’s effort to create a false impression of voter fraud, but said, “It will still yield some damage, and it debases the presidency and the Department of Justice too.”
MSI reported on Oct. 19 that the Justice Department had charged 28 California green card holders over alleged illegal voting. This account focuses on Omar Muñoz’s arrest and the department’s promotional video while the charges remain pending.