Non-citizens caught voting in US elections: arrests span multiple states
NYPost reports nearly a dozen non-citizens allegedly voted in US elections, some for decades. Arrests span Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Florida and New York.
Non-citizens arrested across the US for casting illegal ballots
A Mauritanian national marked for deportation since 2002 has voted in every US election since 2008 and was arrested last week in Philadelphia, according to nypost.com. Mahady Sacko, 50, known as "Sacko Scorpion," was taken into custody in a joint ICE and FBI operation on charges that he "falsely represented that he was a US citizen in order to vote and register to vote" in the 2024 presidential election. Sacko denied the allegations when reached by The Post, saying "Everything is a lie! They are lying about me!" before ending the call. He has not yet entered a plea.
Sacko's case is one of nearly a dozen uncovered by The Post involving non-citizens allegedly voting in US elections — in some instances for decades — with many still listed as active voters on state rolls even after convictions.
Election integrity concerns fuel SAVE Act debate
J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Post that the scale of the problem remains uncertain but is real. "The reality is aliens are voting in American elections," Adams said, adding: "It's way worse than the left says, but it's way better than some others say."
Pew Research Center data from 2023 estimates around 14 million people are legally present in the US without citizenship — holding work permits or visas — but are prohibited from voting.
Pennsylvania has drawn particular scrutiny. State authorities have acknowledged a flaw in the "motor voter" programme, which processes voter registrations at the Department of Motor Vehicles, that inadvertently allowed approximately 100,000 non-citizens to register, though some state officials dispute the figure. Indian citizen Kaushalkumar Patel, 47, of Allentown, is set to stand trial this month for allegedly voting illegally in the 2020 election. His attorney Philip Steinberg said his client "has lived a law-abiding life in the United States for over 20 years," works, pays taxes, and is the father of two young daughters.
Cases from Canada, China, Cuba and beyond
On 6 March, Canadian Denis Bouchard, 70, pleaded guilty to two counts of falsely claiming US citizenship to vote in elections in 2022 and 2024 in North Carolina. He faces up to 10 years in prison. The Post found a man of the same name and age had voted in every election since 2004; that individual was subsequently removed from the state's voter rolls.
In a separate case, Chinese national Haoxiang Gao, 19, a student at the University of Michigan, was charged on 3 June last year with illegally voting in the 2024 election. He surrendered his Chinese passport at arraignment but then boarded a flight from Detroit to Shanghai using a second passport bearing a different serial number, according to the FBI. Gao remains a wanted fugitive; the US has no extradition treaty with China. The Post found he is still listed as an active voter in Michigan.
An October 2025 sweep in Arkansas resulted in the arrest of Cecilia Casellanos, 59, a Cuban national with a pending deportation order dating to 1999 and three prior felony convictions in New York for grand larceny and attempted forgery. She pleaded guilty to perjury and voter fraud on 13 January.
Also in Arkansas, Zlata Risley, 50, a Kazakhstani national registered as a Republican, and Nigerian citizen Chi Baum, 59, with no party affiliation, were both arrested for illegally voting in 2024. Both were lawful US residents but not citizens. Risley pleaded guilty and received probation; details of Baum's case were not immediately available.
Florida mother and daughter among those charged
In Florida, two Ukrainian women — Svitlana Demydenko, 53, and her daughter Yelyzaveta Demydenko, 22 — both registered Democrats, cast ballots in the 2024 general election after arriving in the US in 2021 on nonimmigrant visas, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. Both were arrested last April, have pleaded not guilty, and are set for trial later in 2026.
Illegal voters span the political spectrum
Adams told The Post that non-citizen registration is frequently not a coordinated conspiracy but the result of systemic failures — pop-up registration prompts at DMV kiosks, unsolicited mail-in registration invitations, and third-party voter-registration drives. "At times, it's an organic process of aliens getting sucked in unwittingly," he said. "I wish it were a conspiracy plot because it would be easier to bust. This is systemic failure."
The cases uncovered by The Post cut across party lines. In upstate New York, Iraqi national Akeel Abdul Jamiel, 45, who had registered with the Conservative Party and written pro-Trump commentary, was charged last April with illegally voting in the 2020 election. He has yet to enter a plea and faces up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine if convicted.
Jamaican national Jacqueline Dianne Wallace, 52, who had been in the US illegally for over 15 years, registered to vote online from a community college computer network as a Republican — illustrating, The Post noted, that illegal voter registration does not follow a predictable partisan pattern.
Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)