She Asked Agents Why She Was Being Arrested. Their Answer Was One Word.
The Justice Department Says Four More Names Now Share It — Across Three Battleground States.
On September 4, 2026, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against five people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin — four noncitizens and one U.S. citizen — accusing them of illegally registering to vote, voting as aliens, or helping a noncitizen do both. The case broke publicly a day earlier, when Fox News published exclusive Homeland Security Investigations bodycam footage of one of the arrests: agents at the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania front door of 30-year-old Katya Rodriguez, asking her, on camera, “What is it for?” Standing in pajamas, she answered, “Voting.”
All five defendants are presumed innocent. None has been convicted, and every allegation below comes from a federal charging document, not a verdict. Two of the five — a Carlisle, Pennsylvania couple — were indicted by a federal grand jury; the other three, including Rodriguez, were charged by criminal complaint or information, an earlier stage of the federal process that does not require a grand jury vote.
The case is the latest output of a nine-state “voter fraud surge” that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin ordered earlier this year — and it arrives roughly two months ahead of the 2026 midterms, a timeline the administration has not tried to hide.
- 5 — defendants charged in the multistate case — four noncitizens and one U.S. citizen accused of helping his wife register and vote · Source: DOJ
- 3 — federal districts prosecuting the case: the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the District of New Jersey, and the Western District of Wisconsin · Source: DOJ
- 11 years — the maximum prison term facing Katya Rodriguez, the Harrisburg defendant charged with false citizenship claims, fraudulent registration, and voting as an alien · Source: DOJ
- 9 — states covered by the Department of Homeland Security's “voter fraud surge” that produced this case, ordered by Secretary Markwayne Mullin · Source: DHS / Fox News
- 41 — total charges the broader HSI noncitizen-voting investigation has produced nationwide, per ProPublica — far short of DHS's disputed claim of 250,000-plus noncitizen registrations across four states · Source: ProPublica
Rodriguez's arrest is the only one of the five with public video, and it's the piece of the case getting the most attention. According to the criminal complaint filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Rodriguez — an alleged illegal alien from Mexico living in Harrisburg — is charged with false statement of citizenship, fraudulent voter registration, and voting as an alien. Prosecutors allege she voted in the 2024 general election despite not holding U.S. citizenship. If convicted on all counts, she faces up to eleven years in federal prison, the stiffest maximum penalty of anyone charged in this case; the other four defendants face maximums ranging from one to ten years, depending on the specific count and district.
🚨 WOW! DHS agents have just arrested an illegal alien for voting in PENNSYLVANIA in the 2024 ELECTION. She was swiftly loaded up and hauled off. That thing Democrats say 'doesn't happen' KEEPS ON HAPPENING! 🤯 Katya Rodriguez is from Mexico and lives in Harrisburg, PA...
The footage spread through independent political accounts before the wire services caught up, which has become a pattern in this administration's immigration-enforcement rollout — HSI or ICE releases body-camera video, independent journalists amplify it first, and the formal DOJ statement follows within a day or two. In this case, the department's Office of Public Affairs release naming all five defendants came out the following afternoon.
Rodriguez isn't the only Pennsylvania defendant. Roughly 20 miles away in Carlisle, a federal grand jury indicted Thomas Holtzman, 68, a U.S. citizen, on charges that he helped his noncitizen wife, Marisol Guzman, 50, register to vote and cast a ballot in the 2024 general election. Holtzman faces up to ten years in prison if convicted; Guzman, charged separately with voting as an alien, faces up to one year. U.S. Attorney Brian Miller (Trump-appointed) is prosecuting both Pennsylvania cases.
In New Jersey, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of New Jersey, led by Robert Frazer, charged Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso, a lawful permanent resident from Ecuador living in Union County, with voting as an alien. According to the charges, Cardoso registered online through the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission's portal and then voted in person in the state's June 2024 primary. She faces up to one year in prison.
In Wisconsin, Western District U.S. Attorney Chadwick M. Elgersma charged Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia, a 25-year-old Mexican national living in Beloit, with voting as an alien in the November 8, 2022 midterm election — the oldest conduct in the batch, predating this year's enforcement surge by nearly four years. He also faces up to one year if convicted.
Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump-appointed), confirmed by the Senate in August 2026, framed the case as core to the department's mission: “The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American,” he said. “It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government.” FBI Director Kash Patel (Trump-appointed) added that “protecting election integrity for the American people is one of the top priorities for this FBI.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche: 'The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American. It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government.'
The case traces back to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R), confirmed to the post in March 2026, who ordered a nine-state review of voter rolls looking for noncitizen registrations. Mullin has been blunt about the department's intent: “We will hunt you down, we will find you, and we will prosecute you.” This week's five charges are the most concrete prosecutorial output that surge has generated to date.
“We will hunt you down, we will find you, and we will prosecute you.”
Markwayne Mullin, Homeland Security Secretary
The five charges themselves are documented in federal court filings. A separate, much larger DHS claim is not, and state election officials have pushed back on it directly. In July 2026, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt (R — appointed by Gov. Josh Shapiro, D-PA) responded to a DHS assertion that more than 14,500 noncitizens were on Pennsylvania's voter rolls by saying “noncitizen voting is extremely rare” and pledging that “Pennsylvania election officials will deliver another free, fair, safe, and secure election.” DHS has not published the matching methodology behind that 14,500 figure.
The scale gap shows up nationally, too. ProPublica's review of the broader HSI noncitizen-voting effort found it has produced just 41 total charges across the country — a small fraction of the more than 250,000 noncitizen voter registrations DHS has claimed exist across four states combined. DHS has not released the methodology behind that larger number, and it remains a contested departmental claim rather than a proven fact. The five Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin charges detailed above are part of that 41-charge total — the solid, court-documented core of the story, not the disputed 250,000 figure.
35,152 is the new number just released by Homeland Security of non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey. These are just the ones that got caught. The real numbers will prove to be many times this amount.
This Truth Social post predates and is separate from the five specific Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin charges detailed in this story. FactCheck.org has separately found the broader New Jersey noncitizen-registration figures overstated.
New Jersey's own numbers point to a more mundane explanation for how noncitizen registrations happen in the first place. Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) has disclosed a software error in the state's Motor Vehicle Commission system, active from 2023 into 2024, that improperly registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote and allowed an estimated 400 improperly cast ballots — an administrative failure distinct from the intentional false-statement conduct alleged against Cardoso, but a reminder that noncitizen registrations can originate from state-side software errors as easily as individual deception.
All five defendants are charged, not convicted — the presumption of innocence applies to every name above.
Two defendants were grand-jury indicted; three were charged by complaint or information, an earlier stage of the process.
DHS's separate claim of 14,500-plus noncitizens on Pennsylvania's rolls, and its national estimate of 250,000-plus across four states, remain contested — the department has not published its methodology.
New Jersey's disclosed 6,600-registration figure traces to a state motor-vehicle software error, not to a criminal scheme.
Five people in three battleground states are federally charged, on the record, with illegally voting or fraudulently registering as noncitizens — that part is documented in court filings, not disputed. The much larger numbers DHS has floated nationally are a separate, contested claim the department has not backed with public methodology. Both things can be true at once, and this story keeps them separate on purpose.
