The U.S. Justice Department announced on Thursday, October 29, that 18 more noncitizens have been indicted in North Carolina for illegally registering and voting in the 2024 election — nine in the Eastern District, five in the Middle District and four in the Western District — bringing the number of people charged in the state this year to 30, five days before the November 3 midterm elections. All but one of the new defendants are described by prosecutors as lawful permanent residents; one, in the Eastern District, is described as an unlawfully present Guatemalan national.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The new charges are a major expansion of a case Awaaz Punjab reported earlier this month: on October 15, U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle unveiled 12 indictments in the Eastern District alone for alleged illegal voting in the 2024 elections. Thursday's announcement adds nine more Eastern District indictments — taking that district's total to 21 — and extends the prosecution for the first time into the Middle and Western Districts, covering the Piedmont, Charlotte and the mountains. The Justice Department said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) investigated the cases, which are being prosecuted by the three U.S. Attorney's offices in the state.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Who has been charged
In the Eastern District, prosecutors say all nine defendants falsely claimed to be U.S. citizens to register and vote in the 2024 general election. They include Selvin Porfidio Gonzalez Escobar, 43, a Guatemalan national living in Robeson County whom prosecutors describe as unlawfully present, who registered in 2020 and allegedly voted in the 2020 and 2024 general elections; Elizabeth Margaret Crudup, 52, a Kenya-born lawful permanent resident in Harnett County, who registered in 2008 and allegedly voted in nine general elections and nine primaries, most recently a 2026 primary; and Gregory Eugene Wade, 64, a Bermuda-born lawful permanent resident in Wake County, who registered in 2000 and allegedly voted in 12 general elections. The Eastern District list also includes defendants originally from Italy, Singapore, Jamaica, Colombia and the United Kingdom, now living in counties including New Hanover, Duplin and Harnett. A review of the 18 cases by The Digital Free Press found 17 of the defendants are identified as lawful permanent residents — green-card holders — rather than people present unlawfully.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
In the Middle District, five people — nationals of the Netherlands, Mexico, Cuba, Barbados and Argentina living in Seagrove, Reidsville, Salisbury, Winston-Salem and Concord — were charged by indictment or, in one case, by criminal information with falsely claiming citizenship to vote and voting by an alien. In the Western District, a Charlotte grand jury indicted three men — nationals of Nigeria, the Dominican Republic and France — over alleged false citizenship claims on voting forms and ballots cast on or around November 5, 2024, while a fourth man, a national of St. Kitts and Nevis living in Charlotte, was charged by information with voting by an alien.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
What prosecutors say
“Illegal voting is just that: illegal,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. “If you're not an American citizen, you cannot vote in our federal elections. We want to prevent illegal voting from occurring, which is why we've now charged 30 people just in North Carolina who have violated our laws by illegally registering to vote and illegally voting.” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle, for the Eastern District, said every unlawful ballot “cancels out” a lawful vote and called the 21 Eastern District indictments “an unmistakable message ahead of the 2026 election: if you vote illegally, we are looking, we will find out, and we will prosecute you.” U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson, for the Western District, pointed to the state's razor-thin local results: in North Carolina's 2025 municipal elections, he said, 14 races were decided by 2 votes, 15 races by 1 vote and 7 races were tied. FBI Charlotte Special Agent in Charge Reid Davis and HSI Carolinas Special Agent in Charge Mark M. Zito both said their agencies would keep investigating election-crime cases with state and federal partners.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The penalties are serious. Falsely stating or claiming U.S. citizenship in order to register or vote carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine; voting by an alien carries a maximum of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, the Justice Department said. A federal judge would set any actual sentence after a conviction, considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. Beyond prison and fines, a conviction can carry severe immigration consequences for a lawful permanent resident, including loss of status and removal.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
An indictment or information contains accusations only. Every defendant named by the Justice Department is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court — a caution the department itself prints at the foot of its announcement.
The wider fight over voter rolls, playing out at the same time
Thursday's indictments landed in the middle of a separate, fast-moving legal battle over how the federal government identifies suspected noncitizen voters. In Washington, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg on October 29 ordered the Justice Department to hand over, by Friday, the list of states it has warned about noncitizens on their rolls, in a lawsuit by congressional Democrats (DSCC v. Trump) seeking to stop federal officials from directing election offices to remove specific voters or set ballots aside; he said he intends to rule by Monday, November 2. A day earlier in California, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter refused the department's request to set aside ballots from more than 20,000 flagged voters. Critics of the flagging effort argue that matches built on old immigration records can wrongly sweep in naturalized citizens; the Justice Department says the ban on noncitizen voting, 18 U.S.C. 611, is not itself challenged in the Washington case. The North Carolina prosecutions, by contrast, are individual criminal cases about the 2024 election — counted in dozens, not the tens of thousands of names on the flagging lists.
Source: Immigration Analytics, reporting AP coverage of DSCC v. Trump
For green-card holders in the Punjabi diaspora — in North Carolina and everywhere else in the United States — the practical lesson of Thursday's charges is stark: only U.S. citizens may register or vote in federal elections, and prosecutors say 17 of the 18 new defendants were lawful permanent residents whose alleged registrations stretch back, in some cases, for decades. Registering at a motor-vehicle office or signing a form without checking citizenship status is not a defence the indictments recognise. Naturalized citizens, who are fully eligible, are the group most exposed to being wrongly flagged by records-based sweeps — one reason the parallel court fights over the government's lists matter to diaspora voters as well.
What happens next: the 18 defendants will be arraigned in the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of North Carolina and their cases will proceed toward trial or plea hearings; no trial dates were announced on Thursday. The Boasberg ruling expected Monday and Election Day on Tuesday, November 3, will show how far the broader federal push on voter rolls can go before the midterms are counted. Awaaz Punjab will follow the first court appearances in the North Carolina cases.