The Justice Department has filed election fraud charges against four foreign nationals in Pennsylvania, including two illegal immigrants accused of casting ballots in multiple federal elections.
Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that Eduardo Gallardo Maldonado, a Mexican national; Sade Guppy, a national of Trinidad and Tobago; Dilea Ochoa-Perez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico; and Cliff Sanon, a 39-year-old illegal immigrant from Haiti, each face charges tied to illegal voting or fraudulent voter registration in the state. The cases span the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections, and one defendant allegedly filed eight separate fraudulent voter registration applications, Just The News reported.
The charges land as the Trump administration ramps up a broader federal crackdown on non-citizen voting. The Department of Homeland Security has identified 1,620 confirmed cases of non-citizen voter fraud and made 151 arrests so far, with up to 300,000 additional cases under review across multiple states.
Sanon faces the most serious exposure of the four defendants. Prosecutors charged him by criminal complaint with one count of submitting a fraudulent voter registration application, and the application in question was his eighth. He also allegedly voted illegally in the November 2022 general election.
If convicted, Sanon faces up to five years in federal prison, a year of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000, and a $100 special assessment. How seven prior fraudulent registration applications went undetected, or whether they were flagged and ignored, remains unclear from the public record.
Ochoa-Perez, charged by information with two counts of voting as an alien, allegedly cast ballots in both the 2022 and 2024 November general elections in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburban county west of Philadelphia. She faces up to two years in prison, a year of supervised release, and fines up to $200,000.
The Justice Department has also been pursuing similar charges in neighboring New Jersey, where an illegal immigrant was charged earlier this year with voting in a federal election.
Guppy and Maldonado each face one count of voting as an alien for casting ballots in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Both face up to a year in prison, a year of supervised release, and fines up to $100,000.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf left no ambiguity about the administration's posture toward non-citizen voting.
"Our sovereignty as a nation belongs to the American people and no one else. Anyone, including illegal aliens, who votes illegally in our elections will be prosecuted for corrupting our democracy."
Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Nathan Abel, whose Philadelphia office worked the cases, framed the enforcement as a matter of protecting every lawful voter's voice.
"Voting by noncitizens is illegal and has real consequences for the American public. Every unlawful ballot can undermine confidence in the election process and diminish the voices of American citizens. HSI Philadelphia remains committed to working with our law enforcement partners to investigate election-related fraud and help protect the integrity of U.S. elections."
Earlier this year, the Justice Department warned election officials in all 50 states that allowing non-citizen voting could result in prosecution, a signal that federal enforcement would extend beyond individual voters to the administrators who enable them.
Pennsylvania keeps surfacing in non-citizen voting cases. A DHS audit identified more than 250,000 registered non-citizens across just four states, California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, according to Fox News reporting on a broader multi-state enforcement action. That same operation produced federal charges against five individuals in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, including the arrest of Katya Rodriguez, a 30-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who allegedly voted in the 2024 election by falsely certifying her citizenship.
The White House has pointed to those registration numbers as evidence of a systemic vulnerability. Spokesperson Lauren Bis said the pattern is undeniable despite years of dismissal from the left.
"Despite the media and Democrats claiming it never happens, the evidence of non-citizens registering to vote in our elections continues to pile up."
The White House has publicly detailed the scale of illegal voter registrations across those four states, putting further pressure on state election officials to clean their rolls.
Separate from the Pennsylvania cases, a Nigerian-born lawful permanent resident in Massachusetts, Gladys Adaeze Okafor, 56, was charged with illegally voting in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential primary after she allegedly falsified her citizenship status on voter registration documents under penalty of perjury. Federal prosecutors in that case said she signed false citizenship attestations in July 2022 and October 2023. Seven additional non-citizens were indicted in Texas in a separate election integrity investigation.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has framed the enforcement push in blunt terms, telling reporters that every illegal ballot erases a lawful citizen's vote.
"Every single vote, Kayleigh, that we talk about, that was at the hands of an illegal canceled out a citizen that was legally registered and able to vote."
The 1,620 confirmed cases and 151 arrests represent only the early returns of a probe that Breitbart reported could expand to 300,000 additional cases across multiple states. At least 250,000 foreign nationals are believed to be illegally registered in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada alone.
The administration has also been working directly with state governments to close the gaps that allowed non-citizens onto voter rolls in the first place. President Trump committed earlier this year to fixing election vulnerabilities with states ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Several open questions remain in the Pennsylvania cases. Prosecutors have not disclosed which federal district filed the charges, what specific statutes were cited, or whether any of the four defendants have been taken into custody. The immigration status of Guppy and Maldonado, whether they hold green cards, visas, or some other legal status, has not been specified. Only Ochoa-Perez and Sanon are identified as illegal immigrants.
Most glaring is the Sanon case. Eight fraudulent voter registration applications from one person is not a clerical error. It raises an obvious question: how did the first seven go unnoticed, or if they were noticed, why did no one act until now?
For years, Americans were told that non-citizen voting was a myth, a conspiracy theory unworthy of serious attention. The DOJ just filed four more reasons to stop pretending.