The Justice Department on Monday announced the arrest of 16 individuals across nine states for alleged election crimes, including voting by illegal immigrants and fraudulent voter registration.

Pennsylvania had the most arrests in this nationwide sweep, with four people arrested: Hacina Saadi, a 48-year-old illegal immigrant from France; Jamil Ahmad, a 50-year-old lawful permanent resident from Pakistan; Nighat Jamil, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident from Pakistan; and Paulo Silva, a 54-year-old lawful permanent resident from Portugal. All were charged with illegally voting in the 2024 general election.

Despite being referred to as lawful permanent residents, those with such a status cannot vote in federal, state or most local elections, according to the U.S. government.

"Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen," a DOJ spokesperson told Just the News. "In 2020, Iowa's 2nd Congressional District race was decided by six votes. The department is now bringing more than double that amount of election fraud cases every week. Every federal race also shares the ballot with state and local contests, which are often decided by even narrower margins. 

"Voting by noncitizens and other ineligible voters is a federal crime, and the department will enforce the law whether a case involves one illegal ballot or hundreds. These prosecutions protect the integrity of our elections and deter others from breaking the law. That is exactly what Americans expect from their Justice Department." 

Alabama and Ohio each saw three arrests. In Ohio, British national Cary Ann Patterson, 59, a lawful permanent resident, was charged with illegally voting in the 2024 general election. Patterson claimed in 2005 to be a U.S. citizen when obtaining a voter registration card, even though she was not. She went on to allegedly vote in at least 10 elections.

Two more lawful permanent residents in Ohio, 69-year-old Arshed Zuberi, of Pakistan, and 63-year-old Eliza M. Moss, of the Philippines, were also charged with illegally stating they were U.S. citizens on voter registration forms. 

They each voted in multiple elections. Moss reportedly told investigators that the person who helped her fill out her form had told her she could vote even though she wasn’t a citizen.

In Alabama, two lawful permanent residents – 78-year-old Peruvian national Silvia Delgado Phelps and 42-year-old Jamaican national Staciann Pollion Davis – were also charged with voting without being a U.S. citizen. And 68-year-old Forrest Scott Woody, of Hendersonville, N.C., was charged with illegally voting in Alabama after he already voted in the same election in North Carolina.

In New Mexico, 62-year-old Patrick Perea was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of fraudulent voting for allegedly attempting to cast an absentee ballot for his deceased wife during the 2024 general election.

In Missouri, Cuban national Andre’s Garcia [sic], a 64-year-old lawful permanent resident, was charged with illegally voting in the 2022 and 2024 general elections. Garcia is also accused of claiming to be a U.S. citizen while knowing he was not and allegedly voted in at least 15 elections – including 13 federal elections – over the past 20 years.

Stanley Walton, an 82-year-old Canadian national living as a lawful permanent resident in Idaho, was charged with illegally voting in the 2022 general election. Another Canadian national, 59-year-old Sandra Madeline Watson, who was a lawful permanent resident in Kentucky, was charged with illegally voting in a federal election.

In New Jersey, 24-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen Lizabeth Almonte Rosa, from the Dominican Republic, was charged with unlawfully procuring citizenship and illegally voting in a federal election. Rosa was allegedly not a U.S. citizen when she registered to vote.

Finally, in Hawaii, Polish national Dawid Nalepa, 45, was charged with illegally voting after overstaying his Visa before applying for permanent resident status. He was not a U.S. citizen in 2024, when he allegedly voted in the general election.

With the midterms less than a month away, the Trump administration has increased its efforts to hold accountable those who illegally vote. As Just the News reported last month, the DOJ has arrested over 200 people and secured indictments, with that number set to double soon.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon previously said on the Just the News, No Noise television show that she suspected election officials across the country may be nervous about the recent crackdown.

"I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they've been looking the other way when this is happening, and we're catching it all over the country," she said.

“What we care about is that noncitizens who voted in a federal election canceled out the votes of American citizens. It does happen. It happens a lot more than anybody says. It wasn't being prosecuted under the Biden DOJ. In the four years of the Biden DOJ, they prosecuted a total of 13 people for election-related crimes, and we've done more than that in the last week here at DOJ,” she also said.

In late September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News that his agency is investigating 1,620 cases of voter fraud involving noncitizens and has made 151 arrests. He also said his agency is also looking into an additional 300,000 cases based on states’ voter rolls.

"We're scrubbing them. We're comparing them to those that are in the country illegally, those that are legal permanent residents and those that are citizens," Mullin told Fox News contributor and former White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany. 

That same week, the DOJ announced it had charged 16 people across seven states as part of an investigation into illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration, and additional election-related offenses. 

In one example, the DOJ alleged that a Venezuelan national and DACA recipient voted nine times in elections between 2008 and 2024. In another example, a Mexican national falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen in Idaho and voted.

In Los Angeles, three people were charged in mid-September with paying homeless people in Los Angeles to sign petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters. In New Jersey earlier this year, Gov. Mikie Sherril, a Democrat, claimed a software glitch resulted in thousands of non-citizens being registered to vote, with hundreds verified as voting. The software company, IDEMIA, denied wrongdoing in a statement to Just the News at the time.

“IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” IDEMIA said in a statement to Just the News. 

“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote. Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”