Federal prosecutors say five noncitizens illegally voted in recent U.S. elections and lied to get citizenship, drawing renewed attention to election security and immigration enforcement.

Story Snapshot

• Four New Jersey residents and a Slovak national are charged with illegally voting in federal elections while not U.S. citizens.
• Prosecutors say they falsely claimed to be citizens on voter registration forms and on naturalization applications used to seek citizenship.
• The cases highlight how federal law treats noncitizen voting as a crime and a possible trigger for deportation and loss of legal status.
• Election experts say illegal noncitizen voting is very rare, yet the charges feed wider worries that the system is vulnerable or poorly policed.

What Federal Prosecutors Say Happened in New Jersey

Federal prosecutors in New Jersey say four longtime residents, all legal permanent residents but not citizens, registered and voted in federal elections between 2020 and 2024. Court complaints name David Neewilly, Jacenth Beadle Exum, Idan Choresh, and Abhinandan Vig, and state they were noncitizens when they filled out voter registration forms. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says each of them then cast at least one ballot in a federal election, including two presidential races and a midterm election.

Prosecutors say these four did not just vote; they also swore on official forms that they were citizens. On New Jersey voter registration forms, applicants must claim they are U.S. citizens to join the rolls. The complaints state the defendants falsely certified and attested they were citizens, even though they were not, and later repeated false claims on their naturalization applications, known as N‑400 forms. On those citizenship forms, they allegedly swore under penalty of perjury that they had never registered or voted in a federal election.

The Slovak Case and the Federal Laws Involved

In a separate case, prosecutors charged Marian Charitun, a national of Slovakia, with the same pattern of conduct: allegedly voting in a federal election while not a citizen and then making false statements tied to citizenship paperwork. All five face counts under federal law that makes it illegal for any noncitizen to vote in an election for president, vice president, or members of Congress. They also face charges for unlawfully trying to obtain citizenship by lying, which carries heavier prison time and may trigger removal proceedings and other immigration consequences if convicted, depending on the applicable statutes and immigration adjudication.

Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, noncitizens who vote in federal elections can be fined, sent to prison for up to one year, or both. Federal law also says noncitizens who break this rule can be ruled “inadmissible” in the future and can be deported from the United States. Separate statutes cover false claims to citizenship and false statements linked to naturalization, with penalties of up to ten years in federal prison. A conviction on these charges can have severe immigration consequences, including possible removal and barriers to future citizenship.

How Rare Noncitizen Voting Is – and Why These Cases Still Matter

Many election scholars stress that noncitizen voting in federal races appears very rare when you look at national data. Reviews by nonpartisan groups and election offices have found isolated cases over many years, but not large organized schemes or numbers big enough to change results. The Fair Elections Center calls noncitizen voting a “non‑issue” in terms of scale, warning that some claims of mass fraud often rest on conspiracy theories rather than solid evidence.

New Jersey Resident Charged With Illegally Voting In Federal Election & Making False Statements On Citizenship Application https://t.co/RSd2XaFjaq via @Englebrooknews #NewJersey #CrimeNews #MiddlesexCountyNJ #NonCitizen #Federal #Charges #VotingFraud #False #Statements @HRG_Media… pic.twitter.com/vJ4bEgooJQ

— Art Fletcher (@ArtFletcher9) July 3, 2026

At the same time, these New Jersey charges show that the system is not airtight and that enforcement depends on government agencies catching problems after the fact. Voter registration forms rely on people telling the truth about their citizenship, and election offices only catch problems if they match records against immigration and other data. When false claims slip through, they can sit on the rolls for years, feeding the sense on both the right and the left that the rules are uneven and that ordinary citizens are not getting straight answers about who is voting and how the law is enforced.

Why This Case Hits Nerves Across the Political Divide

For many conservatives, these charges feel like proof that warnings about illegal voting and weak voter rolls were not just fear‑mongering. They see a federal complaint that says noncitizens voted in two presidential elections, despite rules that clearly forbid it. For many liberals, the same story raises different alarms: harsh immigration consequences tied to single votes, and the risk that rare cases are used to justify broad crackdowns that make it harder for citizens to vote.

What both sides share is growing distrust of how the federal government manages elections and immigration. People see systems that depend on self‑reporting, complex forms, and slow audits, and they doubt that officials will fix deeper problems instead of just blaming each other. These New Jersey cases do not show a massive wave of illegal voting, but they do show how one person’s actions, and one agency’s response, can shake faith in a core promise of the country: that every legal vote counts, and that the law applies the same way to everyone, citizen or not.

Sources:

nypost.com, whyy.org, justice.gov, fox17.com, facebook.com, fairelectionscenter.org