Federal & State Law Enforcement Agencies Prioritize Election Related Crimes as Midterms Approach
Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that five people—including two illegal immigrants and two non-citizens had been federally charged with unlawfully casting ballots, falsifying citizenship status, fraudulently registering to vote, and aiding and abetting during the 2022 and 2024 elections in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.
In Pennsylvania, Thomas Holtzman was charged with making a false statement of citizenship and aiding fraudulent registration, while his wife, Marisol Guzman, was charged with voting as an illegal alien in 2024. Katya Rodriguez, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Harrisburg, faces charges of false statement of citizenship, fraudulent registration, and voting as an alien in 2024.
In New Jersey, Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso of Union County was charged with voting as an illegal alien after allegedly registering online, falsely certifying she was a U.S. citizen, and casting a ballot in the June 2024 presidential primary while in the country on a B-2 visa from Ecuador.
In Wisconsin, Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia, 25, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Beloit, was charged with illegally voting as an alien in the November 2022 midterm election.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and other federal agencies conducted the investigations. If convicted, the defendants face potential prison terms ranging from 1 to 11 years, plus fines. “HSI is committed to safeguarding the integrity of our nation’s election systems and ensuring that allegations of unlawful voting, fraudulent registration, and other election-related crimes are thoroughly investigated,” said Acting Executive Associate Director John A. Condon of HSI.
Recently, DHS has been repurposing HSI—an agency historically focused on cartels and terrorism—to spearhead searches for unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.
AG Blanche, FBI Director Patel, and the U.S. attorneys in the three districts said election fraud undermines public confidence and dilutes the votes of eligible citizens.
The cases reflect a broader effort to treat illegal voting as a serious federal crime and coincide with a recent highly publicized nationwide surge by the federal government to crack down on illegal voting and election-related crimes ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Aug 31, several news outlets began reporting that HSI is launching a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review” - And offices in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are expected to take investigative action.
Sept 3, Washington’s Secretary of State and AG issued written guidance to all WA State’s 39 county election offices on how to handle contacts from federal agencies.
Yesterday, Homeland asked DOJ to investigate whether sensitive state voter data — including Social Security and driver’s license numbers (DMV Info)— was transferred to a nonprofit tied to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in violation of federal privacy laws, according to a letter from DHS Secretary Mullin. The letter outlines possible violations of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a leftist nonprofit that shares member states’ voter roll data, which typically includes voters who moved either within the state or to another member state, or voters who died out of the state they’re registered to vote in. However, many prior ERIC member states withdrew, complaining that ERIC failed to comply with this policy.
The problem, Mullin wrote, is that ERIC “exposes millions of citizens’ sensitive private data to unknown contractors, subcontractors and agents of ERIC–potentially in violation of the DPPA. ERIC lobbies states to sign a contract that requires the disclosure of the private data of individuals who were not registered to vote and therefore certainly could not be in need of voter list maintenance. The data fields disclosed include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.”
“This sharing and re-sharing of Motor Vehicle Agency data among NGOs may not qualify as a permissible use of motor vehicle data identified in the DPPA,” Mullin wrote. “This category of data regarding potential voters is incredibly valuable to political parties and campaigns.”
ERIC may have turned over such sensitive data to the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). ERIC and CEIR were both founded and organized by David Becker. Currently, 27 states and the District of Columbia are members of ERIC, which launched in 2012 in Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, Virginia, and Washington—with startup help and funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
OF Note: Hundreds of thousands of dollars of George Soros money via non-profits went to Pew’s 2011 voter-registration-modernization / elections work, and Pew helped fund ERIC a year later.
Also, along with Becker, Shane Hamlin, WA State’s former Co-Director of Elections and Deputy Director of Elections, helped build ERIC and led Washington’s role as a founding state, and served as ERIC’s first Board Chairman before later becoming ERIC’s Executive Director. WA State’s Director of Elections, Stuart Holmes, is ERIC’s Board Chairman.
The latest federal enforcement action comes just weeks after New Jersey officials disclosed a massive state software error that mistakenly registered nearly 6,600 non-citizens to vote, with roughly 400 casting ballots.
Last week, U.S. Attorney Essayli announced the arrest of a Honduran national residing in San Fernando, CA, on a federal criminal complaint charging him with fraudulently registering to vote.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security announced earlier this summer that an audit of public voter rolls had identified more than 250,000 registered noncitizens in just four states: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada.
Recently, FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County, Georgia Election Hub and Operation Center and removed more than 600 boxes of 2020 general-election materials. The warrant sought all physical ballots, tabulator tapes, scanned ballot images, and voter rolls. It cited federal statutes on preserving election records (22-month retention) and on procuring or tabulating fraudulent votes.
July, in South Carolina, an FBI agent obtained the IP address used for an online voter registration as part of a fraud probe—a reported tactic with potential implications in the 43 states that allow some online registration.
In June, FBI agents searched the Cleveland office of the progressive Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC). OOC is a Soros-backed voter registration group that received over $10M in 2024 from Democrat-aligned donors. The FBI seized computers and documents, and interviewed staff and volunteers about possible registration fraud. The fraud probe later expanded to include a subpoena of the national group America Votes over funding. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose had previously referred more than 1,200 potential election-crime cases to the DOJ. About 1,084 involved people who appeared to have registered as noncitizens; 167 of those were also alleged to have voted in a federal election.
Additional FBI & DOJ activity has included visits to election officials (e.g., Milwaukee County, WI) and demands for 2024 ballots from Wayne County, MI.
Also, yesterday Florida law enforcement officials arrested a Mexican national for unlawfully registering and voting in the 2024 general election, highlighting ongoing state efforts to prevent non-citizen voting and strengthen election integrity. The arrest comes amid a statewide law enforcement operation targeting voter fraud. FL AG James Uthmeier said, “Our office is prosecuting this case, which is part of a larger operation across Florida to take down voter fraud; further announcements regarding state-level enforcement efforts are expected soon.”
As the November midterm elections approach, things are moving quickly. For daily election integrity updates and source materials, please visit the SCRP 2025/26 Election Integrity page and the archived 2020-2024 page.
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