WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has named a second round of 17 people arrested in its nationwide crackdown on alleged voter fraud, in a release dated Friday, October 30 — a follow-up to the first round of arrests ICE and the Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this week, which Awaaz Punjab reported when dozens were arrested in 13 highlighted cases. ICE said the 17 cases are only some of its ongoing investigations, and its public-affairs assistant director, Micah Bock, said the agency has “uncovered hundreds of cases of election fraud.”
Source: ICE
“Secure elections protect our nation's sovereignty and Americans' sacred right to vote,” Bock said in the release. “Each vote by a criminal illegal alien cancels out a vote of an American citizen.” Those are the agency's words for its own operation; the cases themselves are allegations and investigations, and an arrest is not a conviction — each person's status, intent and vote will have to be established in court or in immigration proceedings.
Source: ICE
The case with a direct India link
One of the 17 cases will be read closely by diaspora families. Puja Bagga, described by ICE as a lawful permanent resident from India, is alleged to have unlawfully registered to vote and to have voted three times — once in a local election in 2015 and in state elections in 2022 and 2024. ICE did not name the state or locality in its release, did not publish a court case number, and did not say whether Bagga has been charged in a criminal court or placed in removal proceedings. For a green-card holder, an unlawful-voting finding can carry immigration consequences far beyond any fine — which is why immigration lawyers routinely warn permanent residents never to register at a motor-vehicle office or on a form they have not read carefully.
Source: ICE
The other 16 cases ICE listed
The rest of the list spans alleged votes in elections from 2004 to 2025. ICE named Jose Zapete-Quinonez of Guatemala, who it says has a final order of removal and voted in 2021; Christian Lawrence of Liberia, convicted in 2013 of failing to register as a sex offender, who it says voted in 2012 and 2016; Lawrence Cole of Jamaica, convicted of a felony drug sale decades ago, who it says voted in 2004, 2008 and the 2008 primary; Lise Johnson of Canada, arrested for felony voter fraud over a 2022 vote; and Vladislav Vaska of Russia, a lawful permanent resident arrested over a 2024 vote.
Source: ICE
ICE also listed Carlos Javier Alamo-Sorino of Cuba, in custody, whom it says admitted voting and whose record it describes as including sexual-assault and robbery convictions; Ramiro Daniel Cuarezma Aleman of Nicaragua and Karl Stephen Branzon Pau of the Philippines over 2024 votes — Pau, ICE says, overstayed his admission 22 years ago; Joshua Edzie of Ghana, a permanent resident it says voted in November 2024 and August 2025; Cliff Medgy Sanon of Haiti, who has a final removal order and is said to have voted in 2022; Mariana Alexandra Dewey of Peru, a permanent resident it says voted in 2024 and has a disorderly-election-conduct conviction; Gabriel Mendoza Vicente of Guatemala and Gerardo Nieves-Borja of Mexico over 2024 votes; Anthony Tyrone Higgs of the Bahamas over a 2020 vote; Omar Ponce-Juarez of Mexico over a 2022 vote; and Julio De La Rosa of Mexico, who has a final removal order, over a 2020 vote. The prior-conviction details in this paragraph are ICE's account, not court findings in the voting cases themselves.
Source: ICE
Background: how this crackdown is being run
Independent reporting by Bloomberg Government explains the machinery behind the announcements. Homeland Security Investigations — ICE's investigative arm, with about 6,000 special agents — has taken a leading role in illegal-voting probes ahead of the November 3 midterms, work that former officials say sits outside the agency's traditional transnational-crime portfolio. HSI's Identity and Benefit Fraud Unit oversees the investigations, which typically begin with a referral from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, after which agents consult ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations to determine a person's legal status, according to a senior HSI official's declaration reported by Bloomberg Government.
Source: Bloomberg Government
Former senior ICE official Javad Khazaeli, who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told Bloomberg Government that HSI has investigated individual unlawful-voting cases before, because they can involve false claims to citizenship — “but the large resource diversion is new.” Civic organisations, meanwhile, say the highly publicised arrests are creating fear among lawful voters in immigrant communities days before the election, and the effort is already facing court limits: a federal judge in California has barred HSI agents from election-related field operations and interviews in nine states until after polls close, a decision the administration has appealed.
Source: Bloomberg Government
Only U.S. citizens may vote in federal elections. Permanent residents — including green-card holders from Punjab and the rest of India — must not register or vote, even if a registration form is offered to them, and anyone unsure of their status should check before November 3 rather than at the polling place. Being registered in error is itself a problem ICE is now actively investigating.
What happens next
ICE has published no consolidated court filing for the 17 cases, so each will proceed separately — some as criminal prosecutions, some as immigration arrests leading to removal proceedings. The agency is asking the public to report suspected voter fraud on its tip line, 1-866-DHS-2-ICE. With the midterms on Tuesday, November 3, further rounds of arrests are possible, and Awaaz Punjab will treat any genuinely new round as a follow-up to this report and to the first round reported earlier this week — not as a fresh story told from zero.
Source: ICE