On the day before the November 3 midterm elections, the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges involving 63 individuals across the country in connection with illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration and related election crimes — a national announcement that pulls together separate federal cases from Georgia to California, each one an allegation that still has to be proved in court.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Attorney General Todd Blanche called the announcement the largest surge of voter-fraud arrests since President Trump returned to office. The department said that in the last nine weeks alone it has charged 195 noncitizens across 25 states with illegal voting and registration offences, and that since the beginning of this administration it has charged 239 people with voting fraud-related offences. Those are the department's own totals, stated in its release.
What kinds of cases are in the list
The release groups together several distinct kinds of allegation: voting by a noncitizen in a federal election; falsely claiming U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote or to vote; lying on immigration or naturalization documents after allegedly voting; and, in one New Mexico case, fraudulently submitting a voter registration application in another state. The cases are separate prosecutions in separate federal districts — the department did not allege that the 63 people acted together.
In the Southern District of Texas, five people were charged, including Ali Khan, 33, whom the department described as a noncitizen from Trinidad and Tobago charged with voting by an alien in the 2024 election, and Mohammed Omar Hassan, 61, a lawful permanent resident from Nigeria charged over alleged voting in 2022 and 2024. In Maryland, Mohammad Hachibur Rahman, 33, from Bangladesh, was charged by information with unlawful voting in the November 2024 election. The Georgia case in the list — Benito Covarrubias Iniguez, 64, from Mexico, charged with making a false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to vote — is the same Winder, Georgia case Awaaz Punjab reported as a separate arrest story; the November 2 release is the new national development that places it inside a 63-person announcement.
The two Canadian cases from Wisconsin, and an arrest in Arizona
Two of the cases involve Canadians who had lived in Wisconsin. Monique Gignac-Yochum, 60, a Canadian lawful permanent resident formerly of Hayward, Wisconsin, is charged with illegally voting as a noncitizen in the November 2022 and November 2024 elections; a two-count criminal information against her was issued on October 22 and unsealed after her first court appearance, and the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin said she faces up to one year in prison if convicted. Rodger Dedrick, 66, a Canadian citizen living in Stoughton, Wisconsin, is charged with illegally voting in November 2024 and with falsely claiming U.S. citizenship when registering to vote on August 13, 2024; prosecutors said he faces up to five years on the false-claim charge and up to one year on the voting charge. Both were released pending further proceedings, and Assistant U.S. Attorney William M. Levins is handling both cases.
Source: U.S. Attorney, Western District of Wisconsin
Immigration and Customs Enforcement added a further detail on November 2: Gignac-Yochum was taken into custody on October 28 in Tucson, Arizona, by ICE Homeland Security Investigations after a federal arrest warrant was issued in Wisconsin on October 23 and she had moved to Arizona — HSI Milwaukee contacted HSI Tucson, ICE said. ICE Assistant Director of Public Affairs Micah Bock said she allegedly voted illegally in two federal elections and then moved more than a thousand miles away. That custody account is ICE's; the underlying voting charges remain allegations.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Cases that reach back years — and one Indian national
Some allegations in the national list reach back far beyond the last election. In the Eastern District of North Carolina, the department said Elizabeth Margaret Crudup, 52, a lawful permanent resident from Kenya, registered in 2008 and allegedly voted in nine general elections from 2008 to 2024, and Gregory Eugene Wade, 64, from Bermuda, registered in 2000 and allegedly voted in 12 general elections from 2000 to 2024. In the Northern District of New York, the list includes Pooja Pawse, 31, an Indian national and lawful permanent resident, charged with voting by an alien — prosecutors allege she voted in the 2024 general election knowing she was not a U.S. citizen. All of these are charges, not findings.
California appears twice in the announcement. In the Central District, six people were charged with making false statements on naturalization applications after allegedly registering or voting — including, prosecutors say, statements made under penalty of perjury denying they had ever claimed citizenship or registered. In the Eastern District, six more were charged with illegally voting in the November 2024 presidential election. New Jersey, Tennessee, Nevada, Utah, Missouri, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and New Mexico districts also appear in the list.
The Justice Department's own release ends with the reminder that a complaint, indictment and information merely contain accusations, and that all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. No result in any of these 63 cases has been reported yet.
Why this lands differently for immigrant and diaspora readers
For Punjabi and other immigrant families in the United States — many of them lawful permanent residents building toward citizenship — these cases carry a practical warning that goes beyond election politics: registering to vote or voting before you are a citizen is a federal crime allegation that can also surface later on a naturalization application, as several of the California charges allege happened. At the same time, a grouped national announcement on the eve of an election is not evidence about any wider scale of unlawful voting, and the department's release made no finding that any election outcome was changed by the conduct alleged in these cases.
What happens next is court by court: first appearances, pleas and trials in each federal district, on separate timetables, while Americans vote on Tuesday, November 3. Awaaz Punjab will treat any conviction, acquittal or dismissal in the named cases as the follow-up development — not the announcement alone.