Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that seven noncitizens have been charged with election-related offenses tied to the 2024 general election, the result of a joint investigation pulling together state and federal law enforcement. The defendants include nationals of Nigeria, India, Mexico, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, accused of either voting illegally or lying about their citizenship status to register to vote.
According to News Radio 1200 WOAI, the case was built through a partnership between the Texas Office of the Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas, the FBI, and Homeland Security Investigations. Paxton has spent years investigating ballot harvesting operations and illegal voting activity, and this announcement extends that effort into the noncitizen voting space specifically. The Office of the Attorney General of Texas confirmed that state authorities collaborated with federal prosecutors and that the cases resulted in federal indictments, according to a news release from the Office of the Attorney General of Texas.
Per the station's report, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas indicted the seven individuals last week. Paxton said in the announcement that “foreign influence has no place in American elections,” and added that he will continue fighting to ensure that Texas has free and fair elections.
Who Was Charged and With What
Five of the seven defendants face dual federal counts of Voting by an Alien and False Statements of Citizenship in Order to Register to Vote, per the Texas Attorney General's release. Those five are Helen Mayen Adams, a Nigerian national; Khalwinder Singh Bhengura, an Indian citizen; Moises Anwar Arellano-Alba, a Mexican citizen; Celestin Kuasa Katubadi, a national of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Rocio Thrasher, a Mexican citizen.
The remaining two defendants faced single counts. Carlos Salas Barrios, a Mexican citizen, was charged with Voting by an Alien, while Joshua Nmelichukwu Akpom, a Nigerian national, was charged with False Statements in Relation to Naturalization, the release states.
What the Charges Actually Carry
Under federal law, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 611, voting by an alien in a federal election is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison. The release also lists false-statement charges under federal law.
Why Paxton Needed Federal Partners
A 2021 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling addressed the limits of Paxton's state prosecutorial authority. In *State v. Stephens*, the court held that the Texas Constitution deprives the Attorney General of independent authority to unilaterally prosecute election law violations without a request or authorization from a local district or county attorney, according to the Texas District & County Attorneys Association. The ruling limited the Attorney General's ability to initiate independent criminal prosecutions in state trial courts.
How the Voter Rolls Got Here
The charges cap a long audit process. In June 2025, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson referred 33 “potential noncitizen” voters out of 11.3 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election to the Attorney General's Office for criminal investigation, as reported by The Texas Tribune. Those 33 flagged voters represented less than 0.0003% of all votes cast in Texas during that election.
By October 2025, the Texas Secretary of State's Office had cross-referenced all 18 million registered Texas voters against the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, identifying 2,724 potential noncitizens and instructing county election officials to conduct local investigations, per the Office of the Texas Secretary of State. Under Texas Election Code procedures, registrants flagged by the state receive 30-day notices to provide proof of U.S. citizenship or face registration cancellation.
False Positives Complicate the Picture
That screening process has not been without error. The Texas Secretary of State's Office instructed county election officials to reinstate some voters who had been incorrectly flagged by the SAVE system, according to The Fulcrum.
Those errors are now the subject of litigation. Voting rights organizations filed a lawsuit against Texas officials in March 2026 concerning SAVE screening, per the Campaign Legal Center.
The error rate isn't unique to Texas. The screening process can produce initial flags that require local investigations and detailed manual review.
The National Baseline
Broader research has examined noncitizen voting in U.S. elections. Documented noncitizen voting remains a subject of analysis across academic and nonpartisan research.
The announcement adds to Paxton's ongoing election integrity push, which has included investigations and charges. It also comes amid other federal cases involving alleged noncitizen voting.
