The Justice Department has secured about two dozen arrests, prosecutions or convictions involving alleged noncitizen voting in recent months while investigating roughly 90 additional cases and warning election officials of possible criminal liability.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has accelerated prosecutions involving noncitizens accused of voting in federal elections, bringing cases against foreign nationals across several states while investigating dozens of additional allegations ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
About two dozen arrests, prosecutions or convictions involving noncitizen voting have been secured in recent months, with approximately 90 additional cases under investigation, according to a report by Just the News.
The defendants identified in recent cases include a former Kansas mayor born in Mexico, a 66-year-old Philippine national living in Hawaii, two Pakistani men residing in New Jersey, an Australian national in Louisiana and a Chinese student at the University of Michigan.
Each has been accused during the past year of illegally participating in a federal election while not being a U.S. citizen.
Federal law limits voting in federal elections to American citizens, although some state and local governments permit noncitizens to participate in certain local contests.
The latest cases represent a sharp increase in enforcement of an offense that historically produced relatively few federal prosecutions.
The Justice Department has also notified all 50 states that election officials could face prosecution if they knowingly allow noncitizens to remain registered or cast ballots after being informed of their ineligibility.
“It isn’t just bad policy to let non-citizens vote in federal elections, it’s a crime,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said. “And this Department of Justice will intend to prosecute that crime if these election officials, having been informed that they are non-citizens on the voter rolls, knowingly allow those people to vote, enable their enrollment on the voter rolls, are passive in the face of this knowledge, etc. This is not some idle threat.”
Justice Department officials said their review of state voter-registration systems has identified three principal concerns: hundreds of thousands of deceased people who remain eligible on voter rolls, tens of thousands of noncitizens who are registered and foreign nationals who allegedly moved beyond registration and cast ballots in federal elections.
Dhillon, the department’s leading election-law enforcement official, said the true number of noncitizens who have voted may be higher because federal prosecutors historically did not treat the cases as a priority.
“We are trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon because there isn’t a culture of U.S. attorneys going after these,” she said.
Recent prosecutions indicate that approach is changing.
Three non-U.S. citizens in Florida admitted shortly before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration that they knowingly voted in federal elections despite being ineligible.
Two of the defendants — one from Cuba and another from Haiti — admitted voting in the 2020 federal election. A third defendant, a Brazilian national who had become a lawful permanent resident, voted in a federal election in 2024.
“Voting in federal elections is one of the most important rights and responsibilities of American citizenship,” U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones of the Southern District of Florida said. “Federal law is clear: only United States citizens may vote in federal elections. These defendants admitted that they knowingly violated that law.”
In Hawaii, prosecutors brought the state’s first federal noncitizen voting case in approximately four decades.
Remedios Alasaas, a Philippine national living on Maui, was charged last month with illegally voting in the 2022 general election and an August 2024 primary.
In North Carolina, a Canadian citizen who had lived in the United States since the 1960s was sentenced to two months in prison after pleading guilty to falsely claiming American citizenship to participate in elections dating to 2004.
Supporters of stricter voter-roll verification say the cases demonstrate that noncitizen registration and voting require stronger enforcement. Organizations including the Brennan Center for Justice and many Democratic officials have argued that such incidents remain rare and are frequently exaggerated for political purposes.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, had previously maintained that noncitizens were not voting in meaningful numbers in the state. She later acknowledged 15 credible cases involving foreign nationals in the 2024 election.
Among those cases was a Chinese student at the University of Michigan who turned himself in after allegedly registering and casting a ballot in the general election.
The student was charged with false swearing to register to vote and attempting to vote as an unqualified elector, both felonies.
“This is a serious issue, one we must address with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Benson said after the state completed its review.
Questions have also emerged over local laws allowing noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.
In Washington, a Judicial Watch review reported that 388 foreign nationals participated in the District of Columbia’s 2024 general election.
“It is an outrage and insult to every American citizen, and may be a violation of federal law, that D.C. allowed 388 foreign nationals to vote in the 2024 general election,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “Congress can and should end this practice immediately.”
The legal consequences of unlawful voting can extend beyond criminal charges for noncitizens legally residing in the United States. A conviction or admission may jeopardize a person’s immigration status, ability to remain in the country and eligibility for citizenship.
Joe Ceballos, a Mexican national who formerly served as mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, was ordered to report to federal immigration detention after pleading guilty to voting while not being a citizen.
Ceballos pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges and described his participation as “an honest mistake,” saying he believed his status as a lawful permanent resident permitted him to vote.
Administration officials expect the number of identified registration cases to increase as federal authorities continue comparing state voter rolls with citizenship and immigration records.
Dhillon and other officials believe reviews could ultimately identify hundreds of thousands of noncitizens on state voter rolls.
Approximately a dozen states that have cooperated to some degree with federal reviews have identified between 20,000 and 30,000 noncitizens on their registration lists, according to officials.
The administration expects larger totals could emerge from states that have resisted federal demands for access, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. Several Democratic-led states, along with some Republican-led states, are contesting the Justice Department’s voter-roll requests in court.
The enforcement campaign comes as President Donald Trump urges the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, legislation intended to require proof of citizenship and voter identification for participation in federal elections.
Some Republican lawmakers argue that Democratic resistance to photo-identification and citizenship requirements has contributed to public distrust in election administration.
“Obviously, political parties that want to cheat. They will do what they can to fight to prevent photo ID in those states,” Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., told Just the News.
“And that is a problem we have here. People are going to continue to feel that elections are not honest, because that’s the only reason I can think of why people would not want photo ID,” he continued.
Grothman argued that requiring identification for voting should not be considered more burdensome than identification requirements applied elsewhere in daily life.
“I mean, my goodness, you need it for things like getting a drug prescription to save your life, and that’s right, but there are politicians, all of whom happen to be Democrats, who feel that photo ID is racist, and so if we, if we tuck it into some sort of spending bill, we think we can at least make a step in the right direction,” he said.
The widening Justice Department campaign is expected to produce additional cases as federal investigators review state registration records and U.S. attorneys place greater emphasis on alleged unlawful voting.
The dispute is also likely to intensify the broader political and legal fight over citizenship verification, access to state voter rolls and the federal government’s authority to compel election officials to remove ineligible registrants.
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