19 Noncitizens Voted Illegally in 2016 in North Carolina, U.S. Charges

WASHINGTON — Nineteen foreign nationals ranging from age 26 to 71 have been charged with illegally voting in the November 2016 election in North Carolina, the Justice Department said Friday. Nine of the 19 were also charged with falsely U.S. citizenship to get on voter rolls.

A 20th man, whose nationality was not identified, was charged with helping one of the foreigners falsely claim citizenship.

The charges, listed in grand jury indictments issued last month, target citizens of 14 nations, including Japan, Germany, Mexico and Korea. At least nine of them lived in the United States as legal permanent residents. One other, 58-year-old Ramon Esteban Paez-Jerez of the Dominican Republic, had been deported in the 1980s, but returned under a false identity and gained citizenship in 1999.

Paez-Jerez pleaded guilty to passport fraud and voting by an alien on Aug. 14. He faces up to 11 years in prison and a fine of up to $350,000.

A Mexican citizen charged with illegal voting, 26-year-old Diana Patricia Franco-Rodriguez, was also charged with fraud and misuse of visas and other documents, and if convicted faces up to 26 years in prison and $350,000 in fines.

The others face maximum sentences ranging from one to six years and maximum fines of $100,000 to $350,000.

The Justice Department said the violations were uncovered by a newly created federal task force on document and benefit fraud in North Carolina’s Eastern Judicial District, led by the Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.

The indictments were announced as the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature is raising claims of voter fraud in an attempt to win approval of a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would require all voters to produce approved IDs before casting ballots. The state’s previous voter ID requirement was struck down by a federal court in 2016 as an attempt to depress turnout by African-American voters.

Nearly 4.8 million people voted in North Carolina’s 2016 general election, and election officials said last year that about 500 of those ballots had been cast by ineligible voters, the vast majority of them barred from voting because they had felony records. Many of those said they did not know that their criminal record prevented them from voting.

None of those votes altered the outcome of a political contest.

In most cases, the indictments announced Friday gave few details of the circumstances under which the foreign citizens registered and cast ballots, and lawyers for the defendants were neither identified nor quickly reachable. In most though not all similar situations reported elsewhere, noncitizens have said that they were confused about their eligibility to vote.

Of the nine legal permanent residents named in the charges, five had gained that status in 1990 or earlier, and one of them — Dieudonne Soifils, 71, originally from Haiti — had been a legal resident since May 1976. His indictment said he had cast ballots in elections in 2012 and 2016.