The Justice Department charged 10 foreign nationals with casting illegal ballots in Minnesota after they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship, part of a wider election-integrity push.
New York Post reporting on a Wednesday Justice Department announcement details charges against 10 lawful permanent residents accused of illegally registering to vote and then casting ballots in Minnesota.
Attorney General Todd Blanche made the cases public at a Department of Justice press conference in Washington, D.C. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stood with him. The alleged conduct spans the 2022 midterms, the 2024 elections, and primary races earlier this year.
Blanche cast the prosecutions as a core duty, not a side project. Only eligible American citizens should vote. Anything less eats away at public trust.
He told reporters the stakes in plain terms.
"Voter fraud erodes the public’s trust in our electoral system, and it’s vital to our democratic process that we do everything that we can to restore that trust,"
Blanche continued:
"The most basic way the Department of Justice can accomplish this restoration of trust is by working to make sure the only people voting in an election in the United States are American citizens who are eligible to vote."
Every defendant is described as a lawful permanent resident. None held U.S. citizenship. Prosecutors say they claimed it anyway to get on the rolls and vote.
The charged group stretches across several countries and age brackets. Liberian nationals Bhator Konah Bryant, 61; Alan Barbu Kargbo, 48; and Chis Adam Pettiquoi, 43, are on the list. So are Ghanaian national Joshua Frederick Kofi Edzie, 63; Brazilian national Aparecido Donizetti Padovan, 62; Bosnian national Fadil Rasim Ozegovic, 58; Canadian national Christian Liam Schenk, 47; and South African national Hester Sophia Weihmann, 69.
Lithuanian national Edvile Vaidoto Edmunds, 59, and German national Paul Kras, 78, face a single count each of voting by an alien. That charge carries up to one year in prison.
Bryant faces one count of falsely claiming citizenship to register to vote, with exposure of up to five years. The remaining defendants are charged with both offenses.
These are not abstract paperwork errors. The allegation is simple: noncitizens filled out registrations, swore they were citizens, and voted in Minnesota contests.
Officials put the new Minnesota charges inside a larger enforcement wave. More than 90 people have been formally accused of some form of voter fraud since President Trump returned to the White House.
The Biden administration brought just 13 similar cases across four years in office. That gap is not a rounding error. It is a change in priorities.
Mullin said his department is investigating more than 1,600 voting fraud cases in total. The Minnesota filings are one slice of that docket, not the whole story.
A Department of Homeland Security review completed earlier this year found as many as 278,000 noncitizens currently registered to vote in U.S. elections. How many of those registrants have cast ballots remains unclear. The registration figure alone is enough to demand cleanup.
Permanent residents can live and work here under the law. They cannot vote in federal or state elections. Claiming citizenship to do it is a crime, and treating it as one should not be controversial.
Blanche also announced that the Justice Department filed a judicial misconduct complaint against almost every Minnesota federal judge. The department says the judges violated ethical duties by talking to the press about cases, some still ongoing.
The complaint points to a Sept. 17 New York Times article that quoted senior U.S. district judge Patrick Schiltz. In that piece, Schiltz said federal immigration agents in Minneapolis “created a grave threat to the rule of law” and that the Trump administration showed a “disregard for court orders.”
Blanche did not soft-pedal the department’s view of those comments.
"These judges talked to the media, or at least to the New York Times, about cases, some of which are ongoing, in a matter that the department views as a clear violation of their ethical duties,"
Judges police the law. When they become quoted critics of enforcement work while matters remain live, the public has a right to ask whether the bench is staying in its lane.
The complaint lands on the same day as the voting charges. One track goes after alleged illegal ballots. The other goes after what the department calls ethical breaches by the Minnesota federal bench. Both are accountability moves.
The defendants’ alleged votes hit multiple cycles: 2022, 2024, and primaries earlier this year. That pattern matters. A single bad registration is a problem. Repeat voting across elections is a system failure that went uncaught for too long.
Minnesota is not a backwater. It runs high-turnout elections and sells itself as a clean civic model. If lawful permanent residents could falsely claim citizenship, register, and vote across several contests, the safeguards failed in public view.
Blanche’s standard is the old one, not a new invention. Citizens vote. Noncitizens do not. Agencies that treat that line as optional invite the distrust they later claim to fear.
The charging documents’ full dockets, precinct-level ballot details, and custody status for each defendant were not laid out in the announcement. What was laid out is enough to see the theory of the case: false citizenship claims, illegal registrations, and illegal votes.
Prison exposure of up to a year on the voting counts, and up to five years on the false-claim count, puts real weight behind the filings. Paper warnings do not restore trust. Cases do.
Mullin’s figure of more than 1,600 open voting fraud investigations signals this is not a one-state stunt. The 278,000 noncitizen registration estimate from the earlier DHS review shows why the workload exists. Rolls that bloated do not clean themselves.
Compare that posture with 13 similar cases over four Biden years. Enforcement either matters or it does not. The numbers say the current Justice Department has chosen to act.
Election rules are not vibes. They are eligibility, identity, and citizenship. When foreign nationals on green cards can walk through registration and vote, the public is right to demand prosecutions, roll maintenance, and judges who stay out of advocacy interviews about live disputes.
Only citizens get the ballot. Charge the fraud, scrub the rolls, and stop pretending the line is optional.
