Department of Justice charges 5 in Pa., Wisconsin, and NJ with crimes related to noncitizen voting

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged five individuals in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and New Jersey with voting-related crimes.

The department contends that four noncitizens voted illegally in the 2022 and 2024 elections and charged one U.S. citizen with allegedly participating in his wife’s illegal voting.

“The crime of illegal voting undermines the integrity of our elections and harms citizens by stealing the power of our votes,” said U.S. Attorney Brian Miller for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in a press release. “Illegal voting is not a victimless crime but a serious affront to the principles of our democratic republic.”

The charges come as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to crack down on what it contends is an influx of noncitizens registered to vote in the country.

According to the department, a federal grand jury indicted Thomas Holtzman, 68, and his wife Marisol Guzman, 50, both of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in connection with Guzman, a non-U.S. citizen, allegedly voting in the 2024 election. Guzman was charged with illegal voting, and Holtzman, a U.S. citizen, was charged with one count of making a false statement of citizenship and with aiding and abetting another to make a false statement of citizenship, as well as one count of submitting a false voter registration and with aiding and abetting another to submit a false voter registration.

A third Pennsylvania resident, Katya Rodriguez, 30, of Harrisburg, whom the Justice Department said is not a U.S. citizen, was charged with making a false statement of citizenship in order to vote, fraudulent registration, and illegally voting in the 2024 election.

In Wisconsin, Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia, 25, was charged with illegally voting in the November 2022 election. According to the department, Garcia is a noncitizen residing in Beloit.

Finally, the department also charged Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso, of Union County, New Jersey, for allegedly voting in the June 2024 presidential primary at a time when she was living in the U.S. on a B-2 visa.

Holtzman and Rodriguez declined to comment. Guzman did not respond to a call placed to a number associated with her voter registration information. Reliable contact information for Cardoso and Garcia could not immediately be located.

Election officials in the three states did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The department said the cases in Pennsylvania and New Jersey were investigated with the help of Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. On Monday, CNN reported Homeland Security was planning to launch a surge of voter fraud investigations this week.

In July, Homeland Security also claimed it had identified 250,000 potential noncitizens on the voter rolls in four states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey along with California and Nevada. The department has yet to release lists of those voters to the states or provide details on how it identified them.

Officials in Pennsylvania and Nevada have said that Homeland Security officials have expressed far less confidence in the agency’s findings in meetings since that announcement.

While election officials say noncitizens do sometimes register to vote, it’s still a rare occurrence. The largest examples of noncitizens registering to vote typically happen because of software malfunctions or administrative errors at state agencies.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at [email protected].