Some individuals cast ballots in a single presidential election and quietly resumed their daily lives. Others voted consistently across dozens of local, state, and federal contests over the course of several decades before authorities took notice. Federal prosecutors are now holding all of them accountable.
The Justice Department announced criminal charges on Monday against 63 individuals as part of a nationwide crackdown on election-related crimes. The charges target illegal voting, fraudulent voter registrations, and noncitizens who allegedly misrepresented their citizenship status at the ballot box.
The sweep represents what federal officials describe as an aggressive and accelerating enforcement effort across the country, bringing the total number of individuals charged with voting-related offenses under the current administration to 239.
“Today’s announcement marks the largest surge of voter-fraud arrests since President Trump returned to office,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “These foreign nationals allegedly took advantage of the trust of the American people and flouted the laws that govern our nation’s elections. This Department of Justice will continue investigating and prosecuting voter fraud to restore confidence in our electoral system.”
Although the list of defendants includes four undocumented immigrants, the overwhelming majority are green card holders , legal permanent residents from countries including Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and the Philippines , who allegedly signed official forms declaring themselves American citizens.
Court filings reveal that in numerous cases, the alleged voting was not an isolated incident but rather a pattern of behavior that continued unchecked for decades.
In eastern North Carolina, prosecutors charged Gregory Eugene Wade, a 64-year-old Bermudan national, with illegally casting ballots in 12 consecutive general elections dating back to 2000. Another North Carolina defendant, 52-year-old Kenyan national Elizabeth Margaret Crudup, faces accusations of registering to vote in 2008 and participating in nine general elections and nine primary elections over an 18-year period. In the same district, Selvin Porfidio Gonzalez Escobar, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala residing in Robeson County, faces charges for allegedly registering to vote in 2020 and casting ballots in both the 2020 and 2024 general elections.
For several other defendants, legal consequences did not arise at the ballot box , they emerged when those individuals attempted to obtain citizenship.
In Southern California, federal prosecutors indicted six legal residents from Mexico, the Philippines, Israel, Canada, and Iran on charges of providing false information on their naturalization applications. Investigators allege that each applicant swore under oath that they had never claimed American citizenship or registered to vote. State election databases contradicted those sworn statements entirely, revealing mail-in ballots and signed voter registration cards connected to their names spanning several years.
Similar circumstances ensnared green card holders in New Jersey, where prosecutors allege that two men , Antonio Mitchell, 54, of Jamaica, and Andrea Morzetta, 72, of Italy , voted in recent federal elections and subsequently denied doing so while under oath during their citizenship interviews with immigration officers.
The cases extended across courtrooms from coast to coast. In Texas, five individuals face charges, including a Trinidadian man accused of voting in the 2024 presidential election and a Mexican national accused of voting in a 2022 congressional special election. In Maryland, an undocumented man from Bangladesh faces charges for casting a ballot in 2024. In New Mexico, prosecutors charged a Maryland resident, 63-year-old Robert Glenn Johnson, with attempting to register to vote in Albuquerque by falsely claiming state residency.
Dozens of additional defendants were named in federal courts across Wisconsin, Nevada, Tennessee, New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Utah.
Federal authorities emphasized that charges, indictments, and complaints constitute formal accusations, and all 63 defendants remain presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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