Feds Say Three Foreigners Faked Citizenship to Vote in 2024. Tennessee Had Flagged 42 Like Them

Three foreign nationals told Tennessee they were American citizens, registered to vote and cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election, federal prosecutors say. Now all three face federal charges, four days before the country votes again.

U.S. Attorney Braden H. Boucek of the Middle District of Tennessee announced the cases Friday. The defendants are Garfield St. Vincent Bruce, 48, a citizen of Jamaica; Mariela Elizabeth Avila Ortiz, 33, a citizen of Honduras; and Allison Melissa Wilkes, 49, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago. Each is accused of voting in the 2024 federal election and of "falsely and willfully" claiming U.S. citizenship on a Tennessee voter registration application that same year.

"American citizenship is a precious inheritance and the right to vote is one of the most important and solemn trusts of citizenship," Boucek said. "Tennesseans need to know that those who vote illegally will be prosecuted to protect the integrity of our federal elections."

The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations built the cases, with help from the Tennessee Secretary of State's office. "Protecting the integrity of our elections is a responsibility HSI takes seriously," said Dennis M. Fetting, the special agent in charge of HSI Nashville.

The 42 names nobody heard back about

This didn't come out of nowhere. On Oct. 27, 2025, Secretary of State Tre Hargett said his office had run 4 million voter records through SAVE, the federal citizenship-check system the Trump administration had just upgraded for states, and sent the FBI 42 names of possible noncitizens who had voted. President Trump sent Hargett a letter commending the effort. Hargett's office warned that "voter fraud is a felony with serious consequences."

Then came a year of silence. On Oct. 19, the Nashville Focal reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nashville said no one had been charged with illegal voting in the past year, and the Secretary of State's office declined to say what had happened to the 42. Skeptics quoted in the same story argued noncitizen voting isn't a significant problem.

Eleven days later, Boucek charged three people.

Here's the honest gap: neither office has said whether Bruce, Avila Ortiz and Wilkes were among the 42. The release doesn't say how they were caught, which counties they voted in, whether they're in custody, or what immigration status each held. Those are fair questions, and the answers would tell Tennesseans whether the SAVE referrals are finally producing cases or whether these turned up some other way.

What the law says

The release tracks two federal crimes. Voting in a federal election as a noncitizen is a crime under 18 U.S.C. 611, punishable by up to a year in prison. Falsely claiming citizenship to register or vote is a separate crime under 18 U.S.C. 1015(f), punishable by up to five years. Federal immigration law also makes a noncitizen who votes illegally deportable.

Think of it like a stadium ticket. The vote itself is the gate-crash. The fake citizenship claim on the form is the forged ticket that got you in. Prosecutors say all three did both.

Why it matters now

Every noncitizen ballot cancels out a citizen's. Opponents of citizenship checks keep saying noncitizen voting is too rare to bother looking for. But you only find it if you look, and Tennessee is one of the states that looked. The state's elections coordinator, Mark Goins, said Tennessee has been "ranked number one in the nation for election integrity for four consecutive years."

The Supreme Court in September cleared states to use SAVE again after a lower-court judge had ordered them to stop, the Nashville Focal reported. Federal law bars large voter-roll purges in the 90 days before an election, so the new checks won't touch Tuesday's vote. They will shape the next one.

Charges are accusations, not convictions, and all three defendants are presumed innocent. Assistant U.S. Attorney F. Dalton Thompson III is prosecuting. The next question is the one Tennessee voters deserve answered: what happened to the other 39?