Omar Muñoz was getting ready to have his morning coffee just after 5am on Monday when he heard a loud bang at the front door of his Los Angeles home.
“Open up or else we’ll break down the door, and it’ll be bad for you,” the man on the other side yelled, Muñoz, 72, recalled.
Outside, Muñoz saw officers in police vests and opened the door. When they told him to put his hands up, he explained he was frail after six recent surgeries. He said something to the effect of, “I can’t walk fast, I can’t take long steps, to enter a car is painful,” he recalled. The officers nonetheless handcuffed him, he said, and when he stepped out into the street, he saw about six law enforcement cars. And cameras filming.
Photos taken by an Associated Press photographer show officers in the dark of morning, some with helmets, masks and shields, walking a shackled Muñoz out in the red pyjama pants he had slept in the night before.
A helicopter flew above and his street had already been taped off, he said: “It was staged and I’m the patsy … They wanted to make a scene.”
At that moment, 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’s arrest was publicized a day later in a slickly edited Department of Justice (DoJ) promotional video, turning him into the face of the crack down.
The publicity around Monday’s events shocked experts who closely follow these kinds of cases.
“It’s disgusting,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola law school in Los Angeles and a former deputy assistant attorney general. “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.”
The arrests come as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to criminally charge noncitizen voters ahead of the midterm elections, as part of an effort to create the impression that voter fraud is rampant while several studies have shown it is exceedingly rare.
In recent weeks, the administration has charged 40 people across the US for voter fraud, according to Seamus Hughes, who runs the news website Court Watch, which focuses on legal news. Around 170 people have been charged for illegal voting since the start of Trump’s second term, according to Hughes. There were more than 230m people registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election, according to the US election assistance commission.
In California, the DoJ has also sued the state, alleging there are 20,000 non-citizens on the state’s voter rolls and demanding the state be blocked from tabulating certain ballots the justice department claimed might belong to noncitizens. The 20,000 alleged non-citizens represent a tiny fraction of the more than 23m registered voters in the state.
State officials have forcefully rejected the federal government’s claims, saying the justice department had wrongly flagged US citizens and people whose voter registrations have already been cancelled as potential ineligible voters.
Muñoz, a lawful permanent resident and longtime Californian, is accused in a federal criminal complaint of fraudulently registering to vote and making false statements in a citizenship application where he claimed to have never voted. A Department of Homeland Security agent alleges he cast ballots several times since 2020. Green card holders have legal status, but are ineligible to vote. At his lawyer’s advice, Muñoz declined to comment on the specific fraud claims while the charges were pending.
The charges that the 28 California defendants face vary even though the accusations are similar. Muñoz and others charged in the central district of California, which covers Los Angeles, are facing felonies that carry maximum five-year prison sentences. Those who have been charged in the eastern district, which covers the Central valley region, have been charged with misdemeanors which carry maximum one-year sentences.
In the rare instances where noncitizens get registered to vote, it is often because they are confused, experts say. They may not know they are ineligible, or believe they can vote if someone offers them a chance to. California is one of 24 states that has automatic voter registration – a system in which people are automatically registered when they interact with certain state agencies unless they opt out.
Several people who were arrested in the California case this week have expressed confusion about the charges – one saying he mistakenly thought he could vote; another saying she had no recollection of registering to vote as the authorities had alleged; and another flatly denying voting as authorities had alleged.
Democracy and constitutional law 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 of the arrest, particularly before the defendant has even been indicted. One former justice department attorney also said it was a significant departure from the department’s norms to pursue highly politicized cases during campaign season, particularly two weeks before a midterm election, with prosecutors traditionally avoiding actions that could be perceived as trying to influence the contests.
Voting rights’ advocates have raised concerns the Trump administration was trying to sow doubt about the integrity of the elections in the lead-up to the high-stakes midterms.
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.”
“This is all part of this PR campaign,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice-president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice. She was skeptical, however, that the campaign would succeed because there is broader awareness of the administration’s effort to create a false impression of voter fraud. “It will still yield some damage, and it debases the presidency and the Department of Justice too,” she added.
The justice department did not respond to inquiries about Muñoz’s case and about criticisms of its media strategy. A DHS spokesperson declined to answer questions about Muñoz, saying the department doesn’t comment on active investigations. The spokesperson said DHS is “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found” and “aliens who vote … will face the consequences – including criminal charges and deportation”.
Muñoz’s lawyer declined to comment. Los Angeles election officials did not respond to questions about his alleged voting record.
‘This is unheard of’
Muñoz, originally from Belize, said he has lived in the US 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.
He recounted his ordeal to the Guardian while seated on a bench outside the front door of his home on a sleepy dead-end street in Commerce, an industrial city just outside of downtown LA. His birds chirped in a cage nearby and his pug, Daisy, napped on the pavement where a flurry of agents had gathered two days before.
“I’m a strong person, but I’m not doing well,” Muñoz said on Wednesday. “They had me dragged all throughout the media. They wanted to make a spectacle out of me.”
The video the justice department posted to its X account was edited with an upbeat rock song and captioned, “OPERATION PROTECT THE VOTE.” It showed neighbors looking on during Muñoz’s arrest, and included a series of clips of officers holding the elderly man as they escorted him to be processed before his first court appearance. The edit blurred his face.
Defense lawyers said typically in cases such as Muñoz’s, prosecutors would coordinate with federal defenders to have the defendants appear for a hearing.
“These folks are clearly not flight risks and weren’t accused of violent acts,” said Sergio Perez, a civil rights lawyer and former justice department attorney. “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 would historically investigate claims of improper voting, but would not approach these cases in a theatrical manner, nor would prosecutors bring charges in the heat of campaign season, in an effort to avoid any appearance of meddling in elections.
‘I could barely walk’
Muñoz said he fell twice as he struggled to stand while being transported to a holding facility in downtown LA, and that more cameras awaited him there. While he waited to be brought into court, he was placed in additional chains around his waist and feet: “It was so tight, I could barely walk and I was hurting.” He said he suffers from bone disease and nerve pain and the shackles exacerbated his problems: “The pain just progressed more and more.” He was eventually given an apple and candy bar, his only food for the day, he said.
His family showed up to court to support him and he was released later on Monday, at which point 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,” he said.
“The news portrays it as if I’m already guilty,” he added.
Muñoz said the government could have sent him a letter asking him to come to court 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?”
Lliani Orantes, Muñoz’s daughter, who is a nurse, said that when her father was seen by doctors on Wednesday, discs in his spine appeared to be out of line in the area where he had a recent surgery, he was experiencing full-body trembles and his blood pressure was very high: “It’s hurtful he has to go through this.”
Muñoz said he hadn’t 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?”
