The Justice Department is seeking an emergency order from the Ninth Circuit to stop California from counting mail-in ballots linked to more than 20,000 people federal investigators have flagged as likely noncitizens, warning that once the ballots are separated from their envelopes, the damage cannot be undone.First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli and Attorney General Todd Blanche are leading the effort after a district court did not act on their earlier request to review the citizenship of individuals believed to be noncitizens.The motion names California, Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan as defendants and seeks a ruling by Saturday.California and Weber oppose the request.Federal officials say U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security Investigations reviewed California voter registration data against federal immigration records and identified more than 20,000 registered voters who received mail ballots and are considered highly likely to be noncitizens.Federal law, of course, bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections.Essayli told Fox News that the 20,000 figure is the floor and that more names are expected.Some individuals on the list have already been criminally charged for alleged illegal registration or voting as part of an effort labeled Operation Protect the Vote.As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the dispute began earlier this month when the Justice Department delivered a password-protected thumb drive containing the list to Logan’s office and sent letters giving state and county officials 48 hours to review the names, confirm citizenship where possible, and segregate any ballots from those whose citizenship could not be verified.Logan’s office said it had not opened the drive because doing so would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols and that the device was not considered a secure medium.Weber’s office said it had not provided the list to her directly and that earlier federal claims of roughly 190,000 potential noncitizens had never been backed by methodology or data.After the deadline passed, the department sued in federal court in Los Angeles, asking a judge to bar the state from tabulating ballots until it could confirm citizenship.In a statement, Blanche said, “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America. If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government.”Essayli added, “We’re not asking California to take any drastic steps other than to sequester the ballots from the suspected noncitizens,” and said ballots have already been sent out and are being returned.Los Angeles County has already processed more than 331,000 mail-in ballots.Officials argue that once ballots are separated from their envelopes, it becomes practically impossible to identify and set aside individual ones without disrupting the entire count.More than 7,000 of the flagged names have addresses in Los Angeles County.The state began mailing ballots in early October.Late last month, the Supreme Court allowed states to use the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to check voter eligibility for now, after a lower court blocked the expanded version.Trump signed an executive order directing the creation of a federal voter-registration list and new restrictions on mail voting.“It is unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a press release earlier this month. “The Department of Homeland Security and our federal partners reviewed publicly available California voter-registration files and compared relevant records with federal immigration data to identify alien registrants. This preliminary analysis has identified a significant number of individuals in California who are likely noncitizens and appear to be registered to vote; the analysis and review remain ongoing. This is completely unacceptable — as even one noncitizen vote cancels out the ballot of an American citizen and undermines our elections. DHS is committed to identifying unlawful voting, protecting the integrity of federal elections, and ensuring that only eligible American citizens elect America’s leaders.”The post DOJ Rushes to Block California From Counting 20,000 Ballots Tied to Suspected Noncitizens Before Votes Are Mixed Forever appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.