SANTA ANA, California — A federal grand jury sitting in Santa Ana on Wednesday, October 28 indicted three Los Angeles County residents on charges that they lied under oath on their applications for U.S. citizenship, declaring that they had never claimed to be American citizens and had never registered to vote, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.
Source: MyNewsLA, reporting the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California
The three defendants are Sulema de Leon, 35, a Mexican national living in Long Beach; Rouzbeh Seyamaknejad, 63, a Canadian national living in Rancho Palos Verdes; and Butleng Taing, 43, a Cambodian national living in Long Beach. Prosecutors accuse each of them of making false statements on a naturalization application — the Form N-400 process through which green-card holders become citizens. If convicted, each faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. An indictment is an allegation, not a conviction: all three are presumed innocent unless prosecutors prove the charges in court.
What each defendant is accused of, case by case
According to the indictment reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office, de Leon stated under penalty of perjury in her September 2019 naturalization application that she had never claimed to be a U.S. citizen in any way and had never registered to vote in any federal, state or local election. Prosecutors say she had in fact registered to vote in California in June 2013, falsely declaring under oath at that time that she was a U.S. citizen, and a second report of the indictment says she went on to cast a ballot in 2020.
Seyamaknejad is accused of the same false declaration on his January 2024 naturalization form. The indictment says he had registered to vote in California in December 2018, again falsely declaring under oath that he was a U.S. citizen. Taing is accused of making the false statements on his August 2025 application: prosecutors say he registered to vote in California in July 2021 under a false claim of citizenship and then actually voted in both the November 2022 and the 2024 general elections.
"The grand jury has started returning indictments against noncitizens who registered to vote, including those who voted in prior elections," First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement announcing the cases. The word "started" matters: prosecutors are signalling that these three indictments are the first of an expected series, not the whole of it.
How these cases surfaced: a 20,000-name list and 'Operation Protect the Vote'
The indictments land in the middle of the largest pre-election fight over noncitizen voting in the country. On October 26, the Justice Department announced election-related charges against 48 noncitizens across five states — Pennsylvania, California, Florida, New York and Nevada — and the department's Central District of California list of 13 defendants already included de Leon, Taing and Seyamaknejad by name. A second report on Wednesday's indictments says the defendants were identified from a list of more than 20,000 people the federal government says registered to vote in California despite not being citizens, and that 28 suspects were arrested across California last week in the sweep officials call Operation Protect the Vote.
Source: WFB News, on the indictments and Operation Protect the Vote
That 20,000-name list is itself being fought over in court. Los Angeles County election officials have told a federal judge the list is unreliable — in a county sample, a significant share of the people sampled turned out to have been born in the United States — and a federal judge has already refused the Justice Department's request to set aside and segregate ballots linked to the list while the case is argued. Election officials and voting experts dispute the scale the administration claims; the Justice Department and ICE say the arrests and indictments show the system is being enforced case by case, with names, dates and court filings. Both things are true at once: individual prosecutions like Wednesday's are specific and checkable, while the wider claim about how many ineligible voters exist remains contested and unproven.
Every naturalization applicant answers, under penalty of perjury, two questions at the heart of these cases: have you ever claimed to be a U.S. citizen, and have you ever registered to vote or voted in a U.S. election? A registration form signed at a DMV counter or a registration drive does not protect an applicant — the signature on that form is itself a declaration of citizenship. These indictments allege answers given years apart, on registrations from 2013, 2018 and 2021 and citizenship forms from 2019, 2024 and 2025, were compared against each other. Anyone who believes they may have registered while not a citizen should get immigration legal advice before filing Form N-400, not after.
What it means for California's Punjabi and immigrant communities
California holds one of the largest green-card populations in the United States, including Punjabi families across the Central Valley, the Los Angeles basin and the Bay Area who are working through exactly the naturalization process at issue here — many of them first-time citizenship applicants ahead of an election year. None of the three defendants is accused of anything beyond the registration and false-statement allegations, and no vote they are accused of casting is alleged to have changed any result. But the cases show how a single form signed years earlier can resurface at the citizenship interview, and why community organisations that help newcomers register voters will be asked hard questions about how they check eligibility before handing someone a form.
What happens next
The three defendants will be arraigned in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, where they will enter pleas; no trial dates have been announced. Prosecutors have said the grand jury has only "started" returning indictments in these registration cases, so further indictments from the October arrests are expected. Separately, the court fight over the 20,000-name list — and whether ballots cast by people on it can be segregated or challenged — continues into the November 3 midterms, with voters across California already casting ballots by mail.
The wider fight over California's voter list reached its own courtroom climax earlier this month, when a judge refused to hold back 20,000 ballots. Read: Judge Carter rejects DOJ bid over 20,000 California ballots