Seven Noncitizens Charged With Illegal Voting in North Texas, and 117 More Cases Referred: What Green Card Holders Face, and What a Lawyer Can Review

What Changed, and When

The federal charges. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas, a federal grand jury indicted six people on September 10, 2026, and a seventh was charged by criminal complaint on September 11. Federal agents arrested one person on September 11 and five on September 14; the seventh surrendered on the morning of September 15. U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould announced the cases at a news conference in Fort Worth on September 15.

What they are charged with. As reported by NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth from the government’s release, five people are charged with voting by an alien in a federal election and false statement of citizenship in order to register to vote; one is charged only with voting by an alien; and one is charged with false statements in relation to naturalization. The allegations involve ballots cast, or attempted, in the November 2024 general election, and in one case the 2018 general election. Six of the seven cases arise in Tarrant County and one in Dallas County. The people charged range in age from 20 to 69 and are citizens of Mexico, India, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Six are lawful permanent residents. The seventh, according to prosecutors, was ordered removed in July and had been a fugitive until he surrendered.

Two of the alleged ballots were rejected and still charged. Prosecutors say two of the defendants cast provisional ballots in Tarrant County in November 2024 that election officials later rejected, and that casting them was still unlawful. In another case, the underlying vote was in 2018, outside the five-year federal limitations period, so the charge is instead that the person answered questions about voting falsely on a 2026 naturalization application.

The state announcements. The Texas Attorney General announced the seven arrests on September 15 and said its Election Integrity Unit assisted the federal investigation. NBC 5 reported that the Tarrant County District Attorney charged two additional people at the state level in the same operation, for nine in all. Separately, the Texas Secretary of State said on September 15 that it had referred 117 potential noncitizen voting cases to the Attorney General. That number came out of a longer process: in 2025 the Secretary of State ran the state’s roughly 18 million registrations through the federal SAVE database and flagged 2,724 potential noncitizens; after a manual review with the Department of Public Safety and reports from county registrars, 578 of those people demonstrated citizenship, 506 of them because passport information was later added to SAVE. The Secretary of State said it advised counties to reinstate those registrations if they had been removed.

“They’re entitled to all the protections of our Constitution. They’re innocent until proven guilty,” Raybould told NBC 5 of the people charged. Secretary of State Robert Howden said in his statement that his office has “a responsibility to make sure eligible citizens can exercise their right to vote, which is why we are taking great care with this data and conducting additional layers of due diligence.”

Who in Texas This Reaches

• The people charged in Tarrant and Dallas counties, and their families. Six of the seven federal defendants hold green cards, which means a criminal case and a possible removal case now run side by side.
• The 117 people whose cases were referred to the Attorney General. The Secretary of State has not published their names or counties. Each is a person who registered, or was flagged as registered, and whose citizenship the state could not confirm from the records it has.
• Anyone who received a citizenship notice from a county voter registrar. The 2,724 flagged registrations went to county registrars for local investigation. Under Texas Election Code § 16.0332, a registrar who receives information that a voter may not be a citizen sends a written notice, and the registration is cancelled if proof of citizenship is not provided within 30 days of the date the notice is mailed. The state’s own review found that 578 flagged people were citizens, so the notice reaches citizens as well as noncitizens.
• Green card holders who are not sure what is in their file. Several of the federal cases rest on a citizenship box checked on a voter registration form or a Texas driver license application. Prosecutors said the majority of the people charged had been flagged by the Secretary of State over the years because of mismatched paperwork.
• Anyone preparing a naturalization application. One of the seven cases is built entirely on answers given on a 2026 Form N-400, not on the vote itself. The form asks whether the applicant has ever claimed to be a U.S. citizen, registered to vote, or voted.

Scale matters for perspective. About 800,000 people voted in Tarrant County in 2024, and Texas has close to 18 million registered voters; the Associated Press noted that research finds noncitizen voting to be rare. That does not change the exposure for the individual who receives a notice or a charge, which is why the rest of this article is about the individual.

What This Changes Legally

Nothing below is a prediction about any person’s case. These are the statutes the government is using and what they say.

The federal criminal statutes. 18 U.S.C. § 611 makes it a crime for a noncitizen to vote in an election with a federal candidate on the ballot, punishable by a fine, up to one year in prison, or both; it contains a narrow exception for a person whose parents were citizens, who permanently resided in the United States before age 16, and who reasonably believed they were a citizen. 18 U.S.C. § 1015 reaches a knowingly false claim of U.S. citizenship made to register to vote or to vote, and a knowingly false statement under oath in a naturalization proceeding; each carries up to five years. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3282, most federal charges must be brought within five years of the offense, which is why the 2018 vote in one case is charged as a 2026 naturalization statement instead.

The Texas statutes. Texas Election Code § 64.012 makes it a state offense to vote, or attempt to vote, in an election in which the person knows they are not eligible; the Legislature raised the offense to a second-degree felony in 2023. The two county-level cases NBC 5 reported were brought by the Tarrant County District Attorney under state law.

The immigration consequences, which are separate from any sentence. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(6), a noncitizen who has voted in violation of any federal, state or local law is deportable, and under § 1227(a)(3)(D) so is a noncitizen who falsely represented themselves as a citizen for any purpose or benefit under the law. A false claim of citizenship is also a ground of inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(ii), which can surface when a green card holder travels, renews, or applies for anything else. Each of these provisions carries the same narrow exception described above for a person who reasonably believed they were a citizen; whether it applies is a question of specific facts. And for naturalization, giving false testimony to obtain an immigration benefit is one of the statutory bars to showing good moral character under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f)(6).

The practical point for a reader is that a plea, a conviction, or even a written admission in the criminal case can become the evidence in the immigration case. Lawyers who handle these matters describe the two cases as one problem with two courtrooms.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

No article can tell a reader whether a charge will be proven, whether a defense exists, or what an immigration judge would do with their record. These are the questions a criminal defense lawyer and an immigration lawyer actually work through, so a reader knows what a first conversation looks like:

• What the government has to prove. The federal false-claim statute requires a knowing false statement, and the Texas illegal-voting statute requires that the person knew they were ineligible. How a registration came to exist, what the person was told at a driver license office, and what the form actually said in the language the person reads are all facts a lawyer examines.
• Whether the statutory exception fits. The reasonable-belief exception in the federal statutes is narrow and turns on the citizenship of a person’s parents and where they lived before age 16. A lawyer can tell a client quickly whether it is even in play.
• How the criminal case and the immigration case interact. Under Padilla v. Kentucky, a criminal defense lawyer has a constitutional duty to advise a noncitizen client about the immigration consequences of a plea. Immigration and defense lawyers often work a case together for exactly this reason, and the sequence in which things are said and signed can matter.
• Answering a registrar’s notice. For a citizen who was flagged, the 30-day notice under Election Code § 16.0332 is answered with proof of citizenship, and the Secretary of State’s review shows that 578 people did exactly that. For a noncitizen who discovers a registration they did not knowingly create, how and whether to respond is something to discuss with a lawyer before responding, because a written response is itself a statement.
• What to do with a pending or planned N-400. One of the seven cases is a naturalization-form case. Lawyers who prepare naturalization applications review a client’s voter and driver license history before filing precisely because the form asks about it under penalty of perjury.
• Records that already exist. The registration application, the driver license application, the poll book signature, the provisional ballot affidavit, and any statements made to investigators are all documents a lawyer can request and read before a client says anything further.

An experienced immigration or criminal defense lawyer can read the charging document or the notice, pull the record, and explain how the current law applies to one particular set of facts. It is best to talk to a lawyer before talking to investigators or answering a notice in writing.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The 30-day registrar clock is the shortest deadline here. Under Texas Election Code § 16.0332, a registration is cancelled if proof of citizenship is not provided within 30 days after the notice is mailed. A citizen who lets that window close can re-register, but the record of the cancellation exists, and the voter registration deadline for the November 3, 2026 election is October 5, 2026.

A criminal case moves on the court’s schedule, not the family’s. Arraignment, detention decisions, and early plea discussions happen in the first days and weeks. Because a plea can carry an immigration consequence that no later motion can undo, the time to bring in an immigration lawyer is before the first decision, not after it.

Immigration filings carry their own windows, printed on the notices themselves, and they are usually short. A person who receives a Notice to Appear, a notice of intent to deny, or a request for evidence has a date on the paper, and a lawyer can tell them what it means.

The Secretary of State’s numbers are the reason to act rather than wait: of 2,724 people flagged, 578 turned out to be citizens once the right document reached the right database. Paper resolves these cases in both directions, and a lawyer’s first job is to find out which paper matters here.

Sources

1. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas, press release (September 15, 2026) — the seven federal defendants, the charges, the indictment and complaint dates, and the arrest dates. (Primary document.)
2. Office of the Texas Attorney General, press release (September 15, 2026) — the arrest announcement and the agencies involved. (Primary document.)
3. Texas Secretary of State statement, as published by Texas Border Business (September 15, 2026) and WTAW (September 15, 2026) — the 117 referrals, the 2,724 flagged registrations, the 578 confirmed citizens, and the Secretary of State’s quoted statement.
4. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, “Nine charged in illegal voting investigation in Tarrant County, DOJ says” (September 15, 2026) — the case-by-case charges, the two county-level cases, the rejected provisional ballots, the limitations issue, and the U.S. Attorney’s quoted remarks.
5. Associated Press, “Federal charges announced in Texas are part of broader Trump focus on noncitizen voting” (September 15, 2026) — ages, nationalities, the statewide registration figures, and the research context.
6. 18 U.S.C. § 611, 18 U.S.C. § 1015, 18 U.S.C. § 3282, 8 U.S.C. § 1227, 8 U.S.C. § 1182, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f) — the federal criminal and immigration provisions described above. (Primary documents.)
7. Texas Election Code § 64.012 and Texas Election Code § 16.0332 — the state illegal-voting offense and the 30-day citizenship notice. (Primary documents.)