Noncitizen Voting Charges: DOJ Adds 3 States, 48 Charged

The Justice Department’s Oct. 26 roundup adds Florida, New York and Nevada to its noncitizen voting cases. Forty-seven of the 48 people charged are green card holders.

The Justice Department has brought noncitizen voting charges against 48 people in five states, it announced Oct. 26, and 47 of them are lawful permanent residents, not people living in the country illegally. The release folds in the 28 California and nine Pennsylvania cases made public last week and adds 11 green card holders in Florida, New York and Nevada, eight days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Who is in the roundup matters more than its size. These prosecutions are overwhelmingly about green card holders: people on a lawful path to citizenship who, prosecutors say, registered or voted before they had it. About 12.8 million permanent residents lived in the United States in January 2024, according to DHS estimates cited by the Congressional Research Service. For them, the cases are a concrete warning that one ballot can put the status they already hold at risk.

Noncitizen voting charges since mid-September

DOJ announcement	People charged	Where
Sept. 18, 2026	16	Texas, Idaho, Georgia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Michigan
Sept. 30, 2026	10	Minnesota
Oct. 26, 2026	48	California (28), Pennsylvania (9), Florida (6), New York (4), Nevada (1)
Total	74	13 states

Source: Justice Department Office of Public Affairs press releases, Sept. 18 to Oct. 26, 2026. Totals are a tally of those national releases and may not include every case brought separately by individual U.S. attorney’s offices.

The new cases follow the earlier pattern. In Florida’s Middle District, six permanent residents from Cuba, Ecuador, Canada and Brazil, ages 37 to 81, are accused of voting in the 2022 or 2024 federal general elections; three were indicted on the more serious charge of falsely claiming citizenship to vote. The four New York defendants and the Nevada defendant are also green card holders, and the release says the three in New York’s Eastern District gave voluntary interviews to federal agents.

The alleged votes run from 2020 to a June 2026 primary in California. The release does not say how the defendants were found; earlier announcements credited Homeland Security Investigations and, in Texas, the FBI and state investigators. Every defendant is presumed innocent.

A misdemeanor in court, a removal case afterward

Most counts are voting by an alien in a federal election under 18 U.S.C. 611, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, according to the department’s releases. Falsely claiming citizenship to vote, under 18 U.S.C. 1015(f), is a felony carrying up to five years. For most defendants, the prison exposure is limited.

The immigration exposure is not. The Immigration and Nationality Act makes a noncitizen who votes in violation of law deportable, and treats a false claim of citizenship to vote as a separate ground for removal, with no general waiver for either. The practical effect is that a misdemeanor plea can hand DHS the evidence it needs for removal, so plea talks are likely to turn on the immigration record as much as the sentence. Several California defendants also face charges over false answers on naturalization applications, which ask directly whether the applicant has ever registered or voted. How those deportation and waiver rules work for green card holders is explained in earlier coverage of the Pennsylvania cases.

What the count can and cannot show

The roundup is part of a broader pre-election push. Federal prosecutors gave California counties 48 hours to set aside ballots of voters on a suspected-noncitizen list, the department took its California ballot lawsuit to the Ninth Circuit, and a federal judge has limited DHS noncitizen voter investigations in nine states through Election Day.

The two sides read the same cases differently. Attorney General Todd Blanche said when the Minnesota cases were announced that “the law is clear, only American citizens may vote in American elections,” and the administration describes noncitizen voting as a major problem, Spectrum News reported. The same outlet, citing the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group, reported that most such allegations stem from misunderstandings or mischaracterized voter data. The tally itself does not settle the argument. Seventy-four people charged, set against the more than 158 million ballots counted in the 2024 general election according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, show how many cases prosecutors have brought, not how many go undetected, and that unknown is the heart of the dispute.

What to watch

Before Nov. 3: whether the department announces more cases ahead of the midterm vote.
Pleas and removal filings: whether early guilty pleas are followed by DHS notices to appear in immigration court.
Nov. 23: the date a State Department notice lets agencies use passport records to check voter citizenship.

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

Sources

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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