Federal Voting Charges Land Mostly on Longtime Green Card Holders, as North Carolina Flags 1,392 More Voters Through SAVE

The Justice Department on Oct. 16 announced voting charges against 16 more noncitizens in North Carolina, New York and Idaho, and 15 of them are lawful permanent residents, not people in the country unlawfully. Ten of the cases come from eastern North Carolina, where a state check of the voter rolls against the federal SAVE citizenship database produced the referrals, state officials say, and the state has since mailed letters to 1,392 more registered voters that the database flagged. For green card holders, the cases show how an old registration can now surface through data matching, with consequences that outlast any sentence.

Most defendants are long-settled permanent residents

The Oct. 16 roundup came four days after a similar one that charged 16 people across 11 federal districts. Taken together, the department’s two releases describe 26 of 32 defendants as permanent residents, a count based on the releases’ own descriptions. Two are described as being in the country illegally and one as a Visa Waiver Program overstay.

Several of these are not one-time ballots by recent arrivals. In North Carolina, one German-born resident is accused of voting in eight general elections beginning in 2004, and Robert Corbett, born in Canada, registered in 1998, according to the release. Corbett told WRAL he voted “five or six times” and thought he was a dual citizen.

A five-year criminal window, and no window at all for immigration

The charges rest on two statutes. Voting by an alien in an election that includes a federal candidate, 18 U.S.C. 611, carries up to one year in prison. Falsely claiming citizenship to register or vote, 18 U.S.C. 1015(f), carries up to five. The general five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes is the likely reason the cases are built around the 2024 and 2022 elections, even where the voting records go back decades.

The immigration side has no such limit, and it is where the larger exposure lies. Unlawful voting and a false claim to citizenship are each grounds of deportability under INA 237(a)(6) and 237(a)(3)(D), neither can be waived, and DHS does not need a criminal conviction to bring them, as reported here Oct. 16. Both the criminal statute and the deportation ground share one narrow exception: a person whose parents are or were all citizens, who lived in the United States permanently before age 16, and who reasonably believed he or she was a citizen. A sincere belief alone, without those facts, does not qualify. The issue also follows anyone who later applies to naturalize, because Form N-400 asks about past citizenship claims, registration and voting.

North Carolina’s 1,392 letters

The North Carolina cases trace to April, when State Board of Elections staff ran the voter rolls through SAVE and sent the results to the FBI, Executive Director Sam Hayes said, according to Carolina Journal and WRAL. The board began mailing letters the week of Oct. 13 to 1,392 voters, about 0.02 percent of the state’s nearly 8 million registered voters, asking them to confirm their citizenship or ask to be removed, WUNC reported. The board says no one will be removed automatically and that a letter does not stop an eligible voter from casting a ballot. In-person early voting began Oct. 15.

The two sides of the debate are on the record. U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle said “even one criminal act of illegal voting undermines the entire system,” WRAL reported, and he told Carolina Journal that his district now counts 12 indicted and convicted illegal voters in 2026. Gov. Josh Stein said SAVE “contains regular errors” and that many people it flags are citizens, and WUNC noted that the database’s citizenship information can be incomplete or outdated, especially for naturalized citizens. Measured against the 7.9 million registered voters WRAL cited, Boyle’s 12 cases come to roughly 0.00015 percent, a calculation from those reported figures.

The open question is how many of the 1,392 flagged voters are in fact noncitizens, since a SAVE match is a lead, not proof. For permanent residents among them, the letter may be the first sign that a forgotten registration sits in a federal file. Any state that runs its rolls through SAVE can generate the same referrals, so the pattern is unlikely to stay in North Carolina.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Justice, “Justice Department Announces Charges Involving 16 Aliens for Illegal Voting” (Oct. 16, 2026)
• U.S. Department of Justice, “Justice Department Announces Charges Involving 16 Individuals for Election Crimes” (Oct. 12, 2026)
• Carolina Journal, “10 noncitizens indicted for lying about citizenship, illegally voting” (Oct. 15, 2026)
• WRAL, “Prosecutor: ‘Legitimacy of our elections’ a reason for charging 10 NC immigrants with voter fraud” (October 2026)
• WUNC, “NC sends letters to nearly 1,400 voters flagged as potential noncitizens” (Oct. 14, 2026)
• 18 U.S.C. 611, voting by aliens
• 18 U.S.C. 1015(f), false claims of citizenship to register or vote
• 18 U.S.C. 3282, five-year statute of limitations
• 8 U.S.C. 1227 (INA 237), including (a)(3)(D) and (a)(6)
• USCIS, Form N-400, Application for Naturalization

About the Author

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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