64 Noncitizens Charged in 17 States Over Voting

For years Americans were told that noncitizen voting was a myth. The Justice Department now says it has charged 64 foreign nationals in 17 states with voting-related crimes in roughly five weeks.

The figures were provided by the department to Fox News Digital. DOJ says it has now charged 104 people with voting fraud-related offenses since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. The charges range from casting ballots in federal elections to submitting fraudulent voter registration applications.

Where the cases are

Minnesota leads with 11 defendants, followed by Pennsylvania with 10 and Texas with nine. Louisiana has five. New Jersey, California and Florida have four each. Some of those charged are lawful permanent residents, meaning green card holders who live here legally but are not citizens and have no right to vote in federal elections.

These are charges, not convictions. Every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and some cases may turn out differently in court. It is also true that state systems make mistakes. New Jersey has said a software problem at its motor vehicle agency wrongly registered about 6,600 noncitizens, fewer than 400 of whom voted, the state says. A person registered by a government error is not in the same position as one who lies on a form.

The take

Sixty-four cases will not, by themselves, decide a national election. That is not the point. The point is that the people who insisted this never happens were wrong, and the system that was supposed to stop it did not.

Look at the list of states. Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Texas are not footnotes. Pennsylvania decides presidential elections. Minnesota and Texas have high-stakes races this fall. And the margin in a state legislative seat, a county commission or a close House race can be a few hundred votes, sometimes fewer.

The New Jersey episode makes the case even stronger. If a single state agency's software can put thousands of noncitizens on the rolls, the problem is not just a few bad actors. It is a verification process that does not check the one thing that matters most: whether the person is a citizen. Fixing that is not voter suppression. It is basic record-keeping.

That is why the Supreme Court's Aug. 24 order in Trump v. California matters. By a 6-3 vote, the Court let the administration move forward with parts of the president's election executive order, including letting the Department of Homeland Security compile a citizenship list and share it with states. Critics called it an attack on voting access. It is the opposite. Every illegal ballot cancels out the vote of a citizen who followed the rules.

There is a fair question about timing. Announcing these numbers three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms invites the charge of politics. The answer is simple: prosecute the cases in court, on the evidence, and let the results speak. If a defendant is innocent, a jury will say so. If not, the penalty should be real, and it should be known.

Citizens should not have to take it on faith that the person in the next booth is eligible to vote. They should be able to know it. Check the rolls, verify citizenship, and enforce the law that has been on the books all along.