Analiea Milliscent Eccles, a 44-year-old Venezuelan national and DACA recipient, voted in American elections nine times between 2008 and 2024. She was not a citizen for any of them.
She's one of 16 people the Department of Justice just charged in a federal election fraud crackdown announced September 19.
The defendants span nationalities and methods, but the pattern is consistent. Moises Anwar Arellano-Alba, a 36-year-old Mexican national with a final order of removal — meaning he'd already been told to leave the country — voted anyway. Santana Coulibaly, a lawful permanent resident, voted in 2018, 2020, and 2024 while simultaneously applying for naturalization, a process that requires confirming you haven't voted illegally. Victoria Viktorivna Aquilina, a 43-year-old Russian national, was charged. Monica Carzoli, a 38-year-old Mexican national and lawful permanent resident since 2017, was arrested in Del Rio, Texas.
The DOJ's statement was blunt: "If you are not allowed to vote in our elections, you shouldn't."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further on Fox News' Saturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany. "POTUS was right when he said there's a tremendous amount of fraud," Mullin said. "Every single vote from an illegal canceled out a citizen." He added that these 16 charges are the beginning, not the end. "The list is only growing."
The numbers behind that claim are substantial. DHS has made 151 arrests related to election fraud, with 1,620 cases under active investigation and 300,000 additional cases being reviewed. Sixteen indictments from a pipeline of 300,000 reviews means the Justice Department is working through a backlog that could produce charges for years.
The SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, has passed the House four times. It sits with more than 700 other bills waiting in the Senate. Representative Rudy Yakym of Indiana's 2nd Congressional District noted that "the @HouseGOP has passed more than 900 bills this Congress" — legislation that includes the SAVE Act, the Stop Insider Trading Act, and the Farm Bill, all stalled in the upper chamber.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been running his own parallel effort at the state level, but the federal crackdown marks a shift. Previous administrations treated non-citizen voting as a rounding error — too rare to investigate, too politically sensitive to prosecute. The current DOJ is treating it as a crime, which is what it is.
Eccles didn't vote once by accident. She voted nine times across sixteen years. Coulibaly voted in three consecutive election cycles while filing paperwork that specifically asked whether he'd voted illegally. Arellano-Alba had a removal order and voted anyway.
Mullin put the math simply: "One is too many."
Sixteen charged. A hundred fifty-one arrested. Three hundred thousand under review.
