
Evidence
mounts of noncitizens reaching voter rolls, casting ballots as DOJ speeds
crackdown
Trump
DOJ has secured about two dozen noncitizen voting arrests, prosecutions or
convictions in the last few months, with about another 90 more cases under
investigation.
By
John Solomon justthenews.com 7-12-26
A
small town Kansas
mayor born in Mexico. A Filipino
senior citizen living in Hawaii. Two
Pakistani men residing in New Jersey. An Aussie
in Louisiana. And a Chinese
student studying at the University of Michigan. They all have one thing in
common.
Each
has been charged in the last year with illegally voting in U.S. federal
elections as foreigners, part of a sudden wave of prosecutions led by the Trump
Justice Department for a crime that used to be among the rarest in the federal
court system.
The
Trump Justice Department has secured about two dozen non-citizens voting
arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months alone, with about
another 90 more cases under investigation, officials told Just the News.
And all 50 states were sent notices this month that election officials can and
will be prosecuted too if they allow non-citizens to vote.
“It
isn't just bad policy to let non-citizens vote in federal elections, it's a
crime. 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,” Assistant Attorney General for Ciril Rights Harmeet
Dhillon told the Just the News, No Noise television show.
DOJ
officials have found three major problems in policing states’ voter rolls ahead
of the 2026 election: hundreds of thousands of dead people still eligible to
vote, tens of thousands of illegal aliens on the rolls and scores of foreigners
having gone beyond registering to, in fact, vote in a federal election, which
is illegal.
Dhillon,
the top election cop inside the DOJ, believes the numbers of foreigners
illicitly voting in elections is probably higher but has been frustrated that
U.S. Attorney offices across the country haven’t made illegal voting a larger
priority until just recently.
“We
are trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon because there isn’t a culture of
U.S. attorneys going after these,” she explained.
That’s
changing with the sudden explosion of cases.
Just
before the 250th American birthday celebration, three non-United States
citizens in Florida confessed to having knowingly voted in federal elections
despite not being eligible to do so.
Federal
law requires voters to be American citizens to vote on the federal level, but
some states and cities allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
The
three non-citizens voted in Florida and two of them – one from Cuba and the
other from Haiti — admitted to voting in 2020 federal elections. The third, a
Brazilian, voted in a federal election in 2024 after becoming a lawful
permanent resident.
“Voting
in federal elections is one of the most important rights and responsibilities
of American citizenship,” U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, for the Southern
District of Florida, said in a statement. “Federal law is clear: only United
States citizens may vote in federal elections. These defendants admitted that
they knowingly violated that law."
In
Hawaii, a foreigner was charged for the first time in four decades with voting
in a federal election in that state. Remedios Alasaas, 66, a Philippines
national living in Maui, was charged last month with illegally voting in the
2022 general election and again in an August 2024 primary.
In
North Carolina, a Canadian man living in the U.S. since the 1960s was sentenced
to two
months in prison after pleading guilty to making false claims about
his citizenship to vote in various elections dating back to 2004.
Liberal
organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice and many Democrats argue
non-citizen registrations are a minor problem but overblown by conservatives.
That case has been harder to make as the evidence has begun piling up.
Take
for instance Michigan Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who long
claimed non-citizens don’t vote in her state. Last year, she was forced
to admit she found 15 credible cases of foreigners voting in the 2024
elections.
One
of those was a Chinese
student at the University of Michigan who turned himself in after
allegedly being registered
to vote and casting a ballot in the general election. The student was
charged with two felonies: false swearing to register to vote and trying to
vote as an unqualified elector.
Such
cases caused Benson to adjust her messaging.
“This
is a serious issue, one we must address with a scalpel, not a
sledgehammer,” she
said in a statement after the revelations.
In
the nation’s capital, one of the most Democrat bastions in the country, a conservative
watchdog group reported it found evidence that nearly 400 non-citizens
voted in the 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.”
Non-citizens
legally in the country place themselves at far more risk than just prosecution
if they unlawfully vote. Their pathway to citizenship and ability to stay in
the country can quickly be ended.
Take
the case of Joe Ceballos, a Mexican national and former mayor of
Coldwater, Kansas, who recently was ordered to report to federal immigration
detention after pleading guilty to voting illegally as a non-citizen.
Ceballos
earlier this year pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges for voting
without being a U.S. citizen. He said it was “an honest mistake” because he is
a permanent legal resident.
The
non-citizen registration and voting cases are expected to soar. Trump
administration officials like Dhillon believe the total number of foreigners
who made it onto voter rolls will grow into the hundreds of thousands when all
the reviews of state voter rolls are completed.
Many
blue and even some red states are fighting in court to block the DOJ from
examining their voter rolls. The dozen or so states that have cooperated in
some form have identified 20,000 to 30,000 non-citizens on their rolls,
officials said. A much larger bloc of non-citizens is expected to be found in
non-cooperating states such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California,
the officials said.
The
DOJ push comes as President Donald Trump tries to persuade a reluctant U.S.
Senate to pass the Save America Act that would impose citizenship and voter ID
on all federal election voters. Some congressional Republicans believe Democrat
resistance to the legislation may be a sign of something more sinister.
“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 on Friday. “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.
“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.