The Justice Department announced on Monday that it has charged 63 people across the country with election crimes — illegal voting, false claims of United States citizenship to register and to vote, and fraudulent voter registration. Four of the 63 are in the country illegally; most of the rest are lawful permanent residents who, the Department says, claimed to be citizens on voter forms and then cast ballots in federal elections they had no right to vote in.
"Today's announcement marks the largest surge of voter-fraud arrests since President Trump returned to office," Attorney General Todd Blanche said. The foreign nationals charged, he said, "allegedly took advantage of the trust of the American people and flouted the laws that govern our nation's elections." Monday's cases are one day's tranche of a much larger drive: in the last nine weeks alone, the Department says it has charged 195 noncitizens across 25 states with illegal voting and registration offences, and since the beginning of this administration it has charged 239 people with voting-fraud-related offences in all.
Some of the cases reach back years. Gregory Eugene Wade, a Bermudan national and lawful permanent resident, is charged with falsely claiming citizenship to vote and voting by an alien: the Department says he registered in 2000 and voted in 12 general elections. Elizabeth Margaret Crudup, a Kenyan national, allegedly registered in 2008 and voted in nine general elections. Ali Khan, a Trinidad and Tobago national in the country illegally, is charged with voting by an alien in the 2024 election; Mohammad Hachibur Rahman, a Bangladeshi national in the country illegally, is charged with unlawful voting in the November 2024 presidential election. Others involve a single false form and a single ballot — a Mexican national, Benito Covarrubias Iniguez, 64, in the country illegally, charged with making a false claim of citizenship in order to vote in a federal election.
For American citizens, this is the arithmetic of election integrity: every ballot cast by a person with no right to vote cancels out the lawful vote of a citizen — and in a close race, in a single county, a handful of illegal ballots is the margin. It is also the enforcement backdrop to the fights this page has been covering for a week — the administration's suspected-noncitizen voter lists, and the judges who have barred it from demanding that states set those voters' ballots aside. Monday's announcement is the Department's answer in kind: whatever happens to the lists in court, the prosecutions of people it says voted illegally are proceeding name by name.
All of the 63 are charged, not convicted: each is presumed innocent unless and until the government proves the charge in court.
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