CLEVELAND, Tennessee — As Americans voted in the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3, ICE used Election Day to publicise a Tennessee election-integrity case from the week before: its Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested two foreign nationals in Cleveland, in Bradley County, on October 29 and charged them with illegally voting in the 2024 presidential election. Frederic Jean Rene Sicard, 50, a French national, and Mark Adwar Odisho, 30, an Iraqi national — both living in Cleveland — are charged with voting by aliens in violation of U.S. law, ICE and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee said.
Source: ICE — HSI Chattanooga release
The timing matters, and readers should have it plainly: none of the arrests ICE publicised on Tuesday happened on Tuesday. CBS News noted that ICE issued six releases about illegal-voting arrests on Election Day, and that the detentions they described took place the previous week — as here, where the arrests were made on October 29 under a criminal complaint and arrest warrant issued by the Eastern District of Tennessee on October 23. Odisho made his initial appearance in federal court on October 29 and Sicard on October 30, the Justice Department said. The charges concern the November 5, 2024 presidential election — not ballots cast in this year's midterms.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Tennessee
What the agencies say — in their own words
"Election security is national security," said ICE Assistant Director for Public Affairs Micah Bock. "When foreign nationals allegedly cast ballots in our elections, they undermine the integrity of the democratic process and the rights of lawful voters. Our election laws are not optional, and ICE will work with our law enforcement partners to investigate violations and hold offenders accountable." The arrests were carried out by HSI's Chattanooga office as part of a joint investigation with the FBI, with assistance from the Cleveland Police Department.
Source: ICE — HSI Chattanooga release
U.S. Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III for the Eastern District of Tennessee said: "These complaints reflect how seriously the United States views protecting the unique benefits of American citizenship. The right to vote is a fundamental privilege of American citizenship, and the theft of that privilege by a non-citizen will be prosecuted." Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan S. Wilson will represent the United States. Both agencies stress what the law requires: a criminal complaint contains only charges, and both men are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Tennessee
Sicard and Odisho are accused of voting in the 2024 presidential election while not U.S. citizens. Neither has been convicted of anything in this case. Noncitizens — including lawful permanent residents — may not vote in U.S. federal elections, and knowingly doing so is a federal offence; whether these two men did so, and knowingly, is for a federal court to decide.
Background: one case inside a nationwide sweep
The Cleveland arrests are one local piece of a much larger federal push. On November 2, the Justice Department announced charges against 63 people across the country for illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration and false claims of citizenship, and said 195 noncitizens in 25 states had been charged with voting and registration offences in the preceding nine weeks — bringing the total charged with voting-fraud-related offences since the start of the administration to 239, according to the department's figures as reported in coverage of the announcement. Tennessee saw a second case in the same wave: in the Western District, Cesar Sanchez Correa, 44, of Mexico, and Andreas Van Der Werf, 62, of Germany, were indicted over alleged illegal voting in Haywood and Fayette counties in the 2024 — and for Van Der Werf also the 2022 — elections.
For diaspora readers the distinction at the heart of these cases is essential and often misunderstood: a green card makes a person a lawful permanent resident, not a citizen, and permanent residents cannot vote in federal elections even if a registration form reaches them in error. Federal law reserves the ballot for citizens, and election officials in many states now cross-check registration rolls against immigration databases — the very "voting logs" exercise that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said his department will expand after this election. Anyone unsure of their status should check with an immigration lawyer before registering, because an unlawful vote can bring criminal charges and removal proceedings, not just a cancelled registration.
Why Cleveland, Tennessee, is hearing about it today
WVLT in Knoxville, reporting the arrests on Tuesday, framed the announcement the way many local voters received it: "The news of the arrests was released on Election Day, as voters head to the polls to decide the balance of power in Congress and a slate of new governors." Cleveland is a city of roughly 50,000 in Bradley County in southeast Tennessee, about 30 miles northeast of Chattanooga, whose HSI office ran the investigation. Whether the Election-Day timing was deterrence messaging or scheduling coincidence is not something the agencies addressed; what is documented is the sequence — complaint October 23, arrests October 29, first court appearances October 29–30, publicity November 3.
Source: WVLT, Knoxville
What happens next
The cases now move through the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, where prosecutors must present the complaints to a grand jury or proceed to preliminary hearings, and both men will have the chance to plead and to contest the charges with counsel. Awaaz Punjab will report any indictment, plea or dismissal. Until then, the accurate headline is the narrow one: two Cleveland residents stand accused — not convicted — of voting in 2024 while not citizens.