WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday announced that federal prosecutors brought five voter fraud cases this week and released video of Homeland Security Investigations agents arresting a defendant at an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
“What is it for?” the woman in the video asks, wearing pajamas.
“Voting,” one of the agents says, before the woman asks to change. Agents allow her to do so, and the video then shows agents placing a chain around her waist and handcuffing her before she steps into a vehicle.
The woman, 30-year-old Katya Rodriguez, is among three individuals charged in the Middle District of Pennsylvania and are each facing a felony charge. A federal grand jury also indicted a husband and wife — 68-year-old Thomas Holtzman and 50-year-old Marisol Guzman — alleging that Guzman illegally voted in the 2024 election. Holtzman is an American citizen but was charged with aiding and abetting in connection with his wife’s voting, the Justice Department said. Charging documents in those cases were not available.
Two others, in New Jersey and Wisconsin, face misdemeanor “voting as an alien” charges. Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso, a lawful permanent resident from Ecuador who was living in New Jersey, allegedly voted in person during the June 2024 primary election.
Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia allegedly voted as a noncitizen in the 2022 election in Wisconsin. The Justice Department said he’s a 25-year-old originally from Mexico.
“The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government. Election fraud is a serious crime, and it is the duty of the Department of Justice to treat it as such.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said that “election integrity for the American people is one of the top priorities for this FBI,” and that the bureau would “not hesitate to use all available resources to investigate every credible allegation of election fraud and illegal voting.”
While Trump has repeatedly made false claims that he won the 2020 election and also falsely claimed he won the popular vote in 2016, the Trump administration has struggled during both terms to bring any cases showing evidence of significant voter fraud. That’s despite a massive effort in Trump’s second term to obtain voter registration records from states in an attempt to determine if there were any noncitizens registered.
Trump, who until after he won the 2024 election had faced federal criminal charges for his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, said earlier this year that Republicans should “nationalize the voting.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have launched an “unprecedented” effort to combat potential disruption of the 2026 election.
