DOJ Charges 48 Noncitizens in Five States With Illegal Voting, and Most Allegedly Cast Ballots in 2024

The Justice Department on Monday charged 48 people who are not U.S. citizens with crimes tied to voting in American elections. The cases span five states: California, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and Nevada. Forty-seven of the defendants hold green cards, which let them live and work here legally but never let them vote. One is in the country illegally.

Prosecutors say 43 of them cast ballots. At least 31 are accused of voting in 2024, the year Donald Trump won back the White House. Those counts come from our own tally of the case-by-case details in the department's release, which lists each defendant but gives no totals beyond the 48.

It lands eight days before the Nov. 3 midterms, while the administration and California are still fighting in court over mail ballots sent to people federal records flag as noncitizens.

What they're accused of

The charges fall into three buckets. The simplest is "voting by an alien" in a federal election, a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in prison. The second is falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen to register or to vote. The third is lying on a citizenship application by swearing they had never claimed to be a citizen or never voted. Those last two are felonies.

That third bucket is how a lot of these cases surfaced. The citizenship application asks, under oath, whether you have ever claimed to be a U.S. citizen or registered to vote. Prosecutors say at least 20 of the 48 answered no when the honest answer was yes. Think of it like a job applicant who swears he has never been fired, from a company that keeps the records.

Some were on the rolls for decades

The details read less like a one-time mistake and more like a habit. In the Los Angeles-based Central District of California, prosecutors say a Guatemalan green-card holder, Axel Giovani Prera García, registered to vote in 2002 and again in 2005. A Mexican national, Flavio Alejandro Zúñiga, registered in 2003. A Salvadoran woman, Ana Domínguez, registered in 2006. All three are accused of lying about it on citizenship paperwork in the last year and a half.

A Belizean national, Omar Alexander Muñoz, 72, is accused of registering in 2019 as a citizen and then voting in 2020, twice in 2022 and in 2024. In the Eastern District of California, which covers Sacramento and Fresno, prosecutors say Maricela Nazarín González registered in 2020 and voted four times, most recently in 2025.

Two cases go straight at California's same-day registration. Prosecutors say Giezell Viduya Adawag, a Filipino national, and Kamlesh Navnitlal Shah, an Indian national, each registered on Election Day in November 2024, checked the box saying they were citizens, and voted that same day. Another defendant, Camino Giles Jiménez, is accused of voting in three elections, the latest being California's primary this June.

Not just California

California's 28 cases were first announced Oct. 19 as part of Operation Protect the Vote, and Pennsylvania's nine on Oct. 23. Monday's release folded those in and added 11 cases in Florida, New York and Nevada.

In Florida's Middle District, six green-card holders are charged. They include Martha Haydee Desantis, 81, of Ecuador, accused of voting in 2022 and 2024, and Lise Marie Johnson, a Canadian accused of registering in 2021 and voting in 2022. In New York's Eastern District, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, prosecutors say all three defendants admitted to federal agents that they voted in 2024 knowing they weren't citizens. One of them, Irish national Eoin Cranney, 35, admitted it "in substance and in part" in a voluntary interview, according to the department.

Ten days ago, the department announced charges against 16 more in North Carolina, New York and Idaho. One North Carolina green-card holder is accused of voting in seven general elections going back to 2008.

Why it matters now

Critics of the crackdown say noncitizen voting is extremely rare, so there's nothing to see. Rare isn't zero, and these cases show why the number keeps coming up short. Most states take a voter's word that they're a citizen. Nobody checks unless a person trips a wire later, usually by applying for citizenship and having their own paperwork contradict them.

That's the fight in California right now. Federal prosecutors gave the state a list of more than 20,000 registered voters that immigration records flag as likely noncitizens, and asked it to hold their mail ballots until citizenship could be checked. The state refused. Every one of California's 28 defendants was on that list, the department said when it announced them.

"Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen," Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said then. Homeland Security Investigations put it plainly on Monday: American elections should be "decided by American citizens."

What happens next

Each defendant now goes through federal court in their home district. Some were charged by information, others by grand jury indictment. The voting-by-an-alien charge carries up to a year. The false-statement felonies carry up to five years, the department says, and some defendants face added naturalization-fraud counts. Under federal immigration law, voting illegally or falsely claiming citizenship can also be grounds for deportation.

Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the department's Civil Rights Division, told 60 Minutes this month that the work takes time: "There are literally thousands of them out there that we are looking at." With early voting underway and California's mail ballots still being counted, Monday's batch may not be the last before Nov. 3.

All of these charges are accusations. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.