Federal agents fanned out across the Dallas, Fort Worth area over several days this month, arresting six noncitizens on charges tied to illegal voting in the 2024 general election. A seventh defendant, a convicted felon and illegal immigrant from Mexico who had been on the run, surrendered to authorities the same morning the last arrest warrants were served.
The seven defendants, ranging in age from 20 to 69, hold citizenship in four different countries. All are accused of falsely claiming to be American citizens in order to register, vote, or conceal prior illegal voting. A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas handed down indictments against six of them on September 10, and prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against the seventh the following day.
The cases mark the latest front in a widening federal crackdown on noncitizen voting, one that Democrats in the Senate are already trying to undermine by publicizing an anonymous whistleblower complaint against the very investigators who built these cases.
The charges span Tarrant and Dallas counties and involve citizens of Nigeria, Mexico, India, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Every defendant is accused of voting, or attempting to vote, in a federal election despite lacking the one qualification that matters most: U.S. citizenship.
Helen Sayen Adams, a 67-year-old Nigerian citizen, received her green card in May 2024. One month later, she allegedly claimed U.S. citizenship on a Texas voter-registration form. She then voted in the November 2024 general election in Tarrant County. She later admitted she was not a citizen.
Khalwinder Singh Bhengura, a 69-year-old citizen of India and lawful permanent resident since 2022, allegedly lied about his citizenship when registering to vote in January 2024 and again when applying for a Texas driver’s license that August. He voted in November. He, too, later admitted he knew he was not a citizen. Agents arrested him on September 11.
Rocio Thrasher, a 38-year-old Mexican citizen and green card holder since 2017, allegedly declared herself a U.S. citizen when she registered in June 2024 and then voted in November. She admitted knowing she was not a citizen.
Two other defendants, Carlos Salas Barrios, 41, and Celestin Katubadi, 20, cast provisional ballots in Tarrant County during the November 2024 election. Both ballots were ultimately rejected by election authorities. But under Texas and federal law, the act of casting them was itself unlawful. Barrios, a Mexican citizen and lawful permanent resident since 2018, was not even registered. Katubadi, a citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, allegedly falsely claimed citizenship on a provisional-voter affidavit.
Joshua Nmelichukwu Akpom, a 27-year-old Nigerian citizen and lawful permanent resident since 2016, presents a slightly different case. He allegedly registered to vote in 2017 and voted in the 2018 general election. Prosecutors could not charge him for that vote because of a five-year statute of limitations. Instead, they charged him with making false statements on a naturalization application, on which he allegedly denied ever having registered or voted.
The most brazen case may belong to Moises Anwar Arellano Alba, a 36-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico. He allegedly lied about his citizenship when applying for a Texas driver’s license in 2023 and then voted early in the 2024 general election in Dallas County. He admitted in immigration proceedings that he had voted. He had been ordered deported in July and was considered a fugitive until he surrendered to federal agents.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould singled out one defendant, described as an illegal immigrant from Mexico and a convicted felon for lying on a passport application in 2023, during an exclusive interview with Fox News:
“One of the individuals, an illegal alien from Mexico, actually was a 2023 convicted felon for lying on a passport application. So this person has already interacted with our office, the Department of Justice, and chose to then again commit a serious federal violation.”
That pattern, a person who already faced federal consequences and chose to break the law again, illustrates why enforcement skeptics who dismiss noncitizen voting as a trivial or accidental problem are missing the point. Some of these defendants did not stumble onto a voter roll by mistake. They lied, repeatedly, on official documents.
The broader federal effort extends well beyond North Texas. The Department of Justice charged five people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin earlier this month for alleged illegal voting or fraudulent registration during the 2022 or 2024 elections. Meanwhile, New Jersey recently purged 6,600 noncitizens from its voter rolls after a year-long software failure allowed them to accumulate unchecked.
Homeland Security Investigations agents used federal databases and cross-referenced them with publicly available voter roll data to identify the suspects. A DHS spokesperson described the method plainly:
“The Department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross-referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”
Raybould defended the approach by comparing it to routine law enforcement techniques used in other areas of federal prosecution. “We look at Medicaid data to identify outliers all the time, to pick targets,” he said. “HSI has access to databases, and they have a right to access that database. They also can cross-reference that database with publicly available information.”
Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor, who exclusively joined HSI agents during the Dallas, Fort Worth arrests and conducted a one-on-one interview with Raybould, reported that the operation was part of what DHS calls the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.”
The scale of the problem appears far larger than seven cases in North Texas. Just The News reported that the Trump DOJ has secured approximately two dozen noncitizen voting arrests, prosecutions, or convictions in recent months, with roughly 90 more cases under investigation. DOJ officials found hundreds of thousands of dead people still on voter rolls, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants registered, and scores of foreigners who actually cast ballots. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon framed the challenge bluntly: “We are trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon because there isn’t a culture of U.S. attorneys going after these.”
That admission should alarm every voter who has been told for years that noncitizen voting is a myth too rare to worry about. The DOJ has also warned all 50 states that election officials themselves could face prosecution for knowingly allowing noncitizens to vote, a notice that puts local bureaucrats on the same legal footing as the noncitizens they fail to screen out.
Rather than welcoming the enforcement action, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Alex Padilla of California moved in the opposite direction. On Monday, the two senators made public an anonymous DHS whistleblower complaint alleging that personnel working on the Unlawful Voter Initiative were directed to access state voter records in ways that may violate state laws.
The timing is worth noting. Federal prosecutors had just announced charges against seven people who allegedly broke the law to cast ballots they had no right to cast. And the Democratic response was to question the methods used to catch them.
Raybould was direct about the purpose of the investigation and its political neutrality. “We don’t even know who they voted for, frankly, like we don’t care,” he said. “You can vote for whoever. That is not what we are focused on, it’s the act. You’re not allowed to vote if you’re an illegal alien.”
He added a point that should not be controversial but apparently is:
“If someone is illegal, and they vote in an election, that draws down the value of the vote of American citizens, and so it also undermines our democracy, and the vote is absolutely critical. It’s how we elect our leaders. It’s an important voice for American citizens when they get to cast the ballot.”
The effort to discredit election-integrity enforcement through anonymous complaints and procedural objections follows a familiar pattern. For years, certain elected officials and advocacy groups have insisted that noncitizen voting is so vanishingly rare that any resources spent investigating it amount to voter suppression. The North Texas indictments, along with recent DOJ arrests in California and cases across multiple states, suggest the rarity argument was always more convenient than accurate.
Several details in these indictments point to systemic weaknesses that go beyond individual bad actors. Adams obtained her green card in May 2024 and registered to vote just one month later by claiming citizenship. Nothing in the system caught her before she cast a ballot in November. Bhengura lied on both a voter registration form and a driver’s license application months apart, and still voted without triggering any automated flag.
Two defendants, Barrios and Katubadi, had their provisional ballots rejected. That means the system worked at the back end. But the fact that noncitizens were able to walk into polling places, sign affidavits, and submit ballots at all raises obvious questions about front-end verification.
The ongoing legal battles over voter citizenship verification, including a case that has reached the Supreme Court, show that the debate over how to prevent these violations is far from settled. And the resistance from some state officials to cooperating with federal databases makes the job harder.
Raybould made clear that enforcement is not optional. “It’s important to clean up our elections and make sure that they’re free and fair,” he said. “And my job as U.S. attorney is to prosecute cases and controversies. And so if fraud happens, whether it’s our elections, our health care fraud system, stealing from the American taxpayer, I’m going to go after it.”
Dhillon, the assistant attorney general, put the enforcement philosophy in even starker terms: “It isn’t just bad policy to let non-citizens vote in federal elections, it’s a crime. And this Department of Justice will intend to prosecute that crime.”
The fact that election fraud investigations are now being pursued at the federal level with real resources represents a sharp departure from years of institutional indifference. Whether the current pace, two dozen cases closed, 90 under investigation, can match the scale of the problem remains an open question.
Seven noncitizens in one corner of Texas. A dozen more cases scattered across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and California. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants found on voter rolls nationwide. Every one of those illegal registrations dilutes the ballot of a citizen who followed the rules.
The people who insist this problem does not exist are running out of room to make that argument. The people charged with stopping it say they are just getting started.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.