Noncitizen Voting Charges: DOJ Names 63 More

The Justice Department announced noncitizen voting charges and related election-crime cases against 63 more people on Nov. 2, the day before the midterm vote, and the case listings show the targets are overwhelmingly green card holders. Of the 63 defendants, the department’s own listings describe 58 as lawful permanent residents and four as people in the country illegally, with one listed without an immigration status, a tally based on the case-by-case entries in the release.

That profile matters more than the headline number. Green card holders leave a paper trail that can tie them to a ballot, and many are caught when they apply for citizenship and answer, on Form N-400, whether they have ever registered to vote or voted. The prosecutions are reaching the immigrants closest to citizenship, and the immigration penalties they face can outlast any sentence.

Scope: cases in 20 federal districts across 15 states, from North Carolina and Tennessee to Utah, Nevada and California.
Running total: the department says it has charged 195 noncitizens in 25 states with illegal voting and registration offenses in the last nine weeks, and 239 people with voting fraud-related offenses since the administration began. The release does not explain how the two figures overlap.
Charges: described in the release as voting by an alien, falsely claiming citizenship to vote, unlawful voting, making false statements on naturalization applications and unlawfully attempting to procure citizenship. The release does not cite statute numbers.
Status of the cases: charges are allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent.

“Today’s announcement marks the largest surge of voter-fraud arrests since President Trump returned to office,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the release, adding that the department “will continue investigating and prosecuting voter fraud to restore confidence in our electoral system.”

The announcement folds together cases already in motion. It includes the six Los Angeles County green card holders charged with lying on naturalization forms that federal prosecutors there announced the same day, covered here alongside the Supreme Court’s California ballot order, and nine defendants in eastern North Carolina, where earlier charges had already reached 30. Several entries say the defendant told USCIS on a citizenship application that he or she had never registered or voted, the same theory behind the first Los Angeles indictments. A false answer on a form signed under penalty of perjury is usually easier to prove than what someone intended at a polling place years earlier.

The release says nothing about immigration consequences, but the law is blunt. A noncitizen who votes in violation of a federal, state or local law is both inadmissible and deportable under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and a false claim of citizenship carries its own permanent bar. The only exception is narrow: it protects people whose parents were citizens, who lived in the United States before age 16 and who reasonably believed they were citizens. Unlawful voting can also sink a naturalization application. The practical effect is that a plea to even a minor charge can still end in removal, which is why the immigration side of these cases will shape how they are resolved.

The department has argued in court that a noncitizen’s vote cannot be taken back once it is counted, and it presents prosecution as the way to restore confidence in elections. State officials and researchers have pushed back on the lists behind some cases: a UCLA review filed in federal court found that 42 percent of the names on the department’s California list were not on the state’s current voter file, as reported here, and Washington’s secretary of state says the federal list for his state includes U.S. citizens.

The next signals will come after Election Day: whether the pace of filings continues once the vote is over, how many defendants plead to charges that carry immigration consequences, and whether any case tests the reasonable-belief exception. Many of the alleged votes date back years, so the limits on criminal immigration fraud charges will matter in some cases, though the immigration consequences carry no comparable deadline.

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 an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego 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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