Overview
- Federal prosecutors announced Friday that five non‑U.S. citizens were indicted in the Southern District of Texas on charges including voting by an alien, falsely claiming U.S. citizenship, and lying on immigration forms.
- The defendants named by the U.S. Attorney’s Office are Ali Khan, a DACA recipient from Trinidad and Tobago, Mohammed Omar Hassan of Nigeria, Diego Benavides Rodriguez, Jose Vasquez‑Mendoza, and Karen Hinojosa‑Martinez, all Mexican nationals or former lawful permanent residents.
- Prosecutors allege some defendants voted in the 2024 election and others in 2022; the false‑claim and immigration‑document charges carry up to five years in prison and large fines while the illegal‑voting counts carry up to one year and smaller fines.
- The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations led the inquiries with help from the Texas attorney general and USCIS, using cross‑matching of state voter rolls with immigration and commercial data to identify leads, a method experts say can produce false positives and privacy concerns.
- These Texas indictments add to a national DOJ initiative seeking prosecutions in multiple states but face legal uncertainty after a federal judge found 18 U.S.C. § 611 unconstitutional as applied and appeals and motions continue that could limit or pause cases.