LAS VEGAS, Nevada — An Argentine national living in Las Vegas has been charged with illegally voting in the 2024 general election in Clark County, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada announced in its latest release — the fifth person federal prosecutors have charged with illegal voting in Nevada this month, days before the November 3 midterm elections.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, District of Nevada
According to the criminal information cited by the Justice Department, on or about November 5, 2024, Mariela Delia Mendoza, an Argentine national and a lawful permanent resident of the United States living in Las Vegas, illegally voted in an election held in part to elect a candidate for President, Vice President, Member of the Senate and Member of the House of Representatives. She was not a United States citizen, prosecutors say. Mendoza is charged with one count of voting by an alien.
The charge, the penalty and the investigators
The maximum statutory penalty on the count is one year of imprisonment, a fine of up to $100,000, or both. An initial appearance date for Mendoza has not yet been scheduled, the Justice Department said. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah for the District of Nevada said: 'As this additional case demonstrates, there is a catastrophic failure to protect the ballot box,' adding that her office would enforce a zero-tolerance policy and prosecute every such case to the fullest extent of the law. Erin Burke, Special Agent in Charge for HSI Los Angeles, said: 'Federal election laws are clear, and efforts to circumvent them will be investigated.' Both statements are the government's position; the charge itself remains an unproven allegation.
The four earlier Nevada cases this month
In the same release, the U.S. Attorney's Office listed the four people it had already charged this month with voting by an alien in Nevada. Jullie Ann Sumalinog Moore, from the Philippines and a lawful permanent resident, is accused of illegally voting in the 2024 general election. Moneir Elzobier Ali Yousif, from Sudan and a lawful permanent resident, faces the same accusation over the 2024 general election. Khalida Safi, from Afghanistan and a lawful permanent resident, is likewise accused over the 2024 general election. And Mlebinge Riziki Ramadhani, from the Democratic Republic of Congo and a lawful permanent resident, is accused of illegally voting in the 2022 general election.
Ramadhani's case, announced from Reno, shows the pattern in detail. According to the criminal information in that case, Ramadhani, who has been residing in Washoe County, illegally voted on or about November 8, 2022, in a federal election, and was not a U.S. citizen. She faces the same single count, the same maximum of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, and her initial appearance has also not yet been scheduled. The FBI and HSI investigated that case as well.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, District of Nevada (fourth case)
In the fourth-case announcement, Chattah said: 'The law is clear: every eligible citizen has the right to vote, and no one has the right to corrupt that process through fraudulent means.' Christopher S. Delzotto, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Las Vegas office, said the FBI 'protects the electoral process by deploying specialized election-crimes coordinators across all field offices' and that coordinators and prosecutors evaluate federal election-crime allegations through dedicated command posts.
The Attorney General's name on the files — and the bigger claim that collapsed
The Nevada cases have drawn national attention for an unusual reason. Reporting by Law & Crime, based on federal court records, found that Attorney General Todd Blanche — who previously served as President Donald Trump's personal attorney — personally joined the first four of these prosecutions, with his name at the top of each charging document. Between October 23 and October 29, Moore, Safi, Yousif and Ramadhani were each charged with one misdemeanour count of voting as an alien under 18 U.S.C. § 611, according to those court filings, first reported by All Rise News editor-in-chief Adam Klasfeld.
Source: Law & Crime (via Internewscast)
Law & Crime also reported the backdrop against which the small individual cases emerged. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security said Nevada's voter rolls included roughly 16,000 noncitizens; officials later reduced that figure to 185 alleged noncitizens during the summer, and Nevada authorities subsequently concluded that all 185 were, in fact, citizens. That sequence — a very large initial claim, a much smaller revised list, and a state finding that the listed people were citizens — is the reported context in which prosecutors are now proceeding person by person against five named permanent residents over single ballots cast in 2022 and 2024.
Why this matters for immigrant readers — including Punjabi families in Nevada
The legal line at the centre of all five cases is one every immigrant household needs to know exactly: lawful permanent residence — a green card — does not include the right to vote in a federal election. Only U.S. citizens may vote for President, the Senate and the House. A permanent resident who casts a federal ballot, even by mistake or misunderstanding, can face a criminal charge under § 611, on top of any immigration consequences a conviction may carry. Nevada is home to a growing Punjabi community, including truckers who run the I-15 and US-95 corridors through Las Vegas and families settled across Clark and Washoe counties. For any permanent-resident reader in Nevada or anywhere in the United States, the practical lesson of this month's five cases is direct: do not register or vote in a federal election until citizenship is actually granted, and if a registration form arrives or a ballot question arises, check status with an immigration lawyer or the county election office before signing anything.
At the same time, the cases are allegations about individual ballots — five named people over two election cycles — and they do not by themselves show voting by noncitizens on any large scale in Nevada. That distinction is the same one raised by the state's own review of the earlier 185-person list, which found every listed person to be a citizen, according to Law & Crime's reporting.
What happens next
Mendoza and Ramadhani both await an initial court appearance that has not yet been scheduled, and the other three October cases are at the same early stage. An information is merely an allegation, the Justice Department notes in each release, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. The cases will move through federal court in Nevada while the state votes in the November 3 midterms, an election in which the integrity of the ballot — who may cast one, and how claims about illegal voting are tested — is itself one of the central arguments between the parties.