“I Just Considered Myself a Citizen.” A Federal Grand Jury Says She Voted Illegally — Twice.
A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Louisiana indicted Denise Nataly Migliore, an Australian national and lawful permanent resident living in Franklinton, Louisiana, on June 11, 2026, on four felony counts stemming from allegations that she falsely claimed U.S. citizenship to register to vote — and then voted — in both the 2022 and 2024 federal elections. Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested her on July 1, 2026, at the federal courthouse in New Orleans.
Migliore has not entered a plea and, as of this writing, has not retained an attorney, telling NOLA.com she cannot afford one. She is presumed innocent of every charge. According to her own account to reporters, she “just considered myself a citizen” and says poll workers who checked her identification in 2024 “never asked” about citizenship status.
The case is the most concrete result yet of Louisiana becoming, in May 2025, the first state to run its entire voter roll through the Department of Homeland Security's revamped SAVE database. But the state's own chief election officer — a Republican — has been careful to say that what her office found statewide is not evidence of an epidemic. Both facts are true, and this story holds both of them.
- 4 — federal counts in the indictment — two counts each of false statements to register to vote (18 U.S.C. §1015(f)) and illegal voting in a federal election (52 U.S.C. §20511(2)(B)), one set for 2022 and one for 2024 — Source: DOJ, U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Louisiana
- $250,000 — maximum fine if convicted, on top of up to 5 years' imprisonment, 3 years of supervised release, a $100 special assessment, and potential deportation given her lawful-permanent-resident status — Source: DOJ USAO EDLA
- ~79 of ~390 — noncitizens found registered to vote statewide who had cast at least one ballot dating back to the 1980s, out of roughly 2.9–3 million registered Louisiana voters — Source: Louisiana Secretary of State audit, reported by Louisiana Illuminator, September 2025
- May 2025 — the month Louisiana became the first state to run its voter rolls through DHS's revamped SAVE database, the review that led to this case — Source: The Daily Signal
- Same day — July 7, 2026 — the date Fox News reported this arrest is also the date DOJ Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon sent letters to all 50 states and D.C. warning of potential criminal liability for retaining noncitizens on voter rolls, a coincidental pattern, not a case-specific one — Source: Votebeat
According to the indictment, Denise Nataly Migliore falsely claimed U.S. citizenship on a voter-registration form on October 6, 2022, and then allegedly voted in the November 8, 2022 federal election. Prosecutors allege she repeated the false citizenship claim on October 22, 2024, and then voted again — in person, at the St. Tammany Parish Government Building, on November 5, 2024. Those four allegations map to the indictment's four counts: two counts of making false statements to register to vote, under 18 U.S.C. §1015(f), and two counts of illegal voting in a federal election, under 52 U.S.C. §20511(2)(B) — one set of two for each election cycle.
The grand jury returned the indictment on June 11, 2026. Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested Migliore on July 1, 2026, at the federal courthouse in New Orleans. She has not entered a plea. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a $250,000 fine, and a $100 special assessment — and, because she is a lawful permanent resident rather than a citizen, a conviction could also expose her to deportation.
“This alien from Australia now faces federal charges for falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen and illegally casting ballots in two elections.”
DHS / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement · statement, July 7, 2026
Migliore is presumed innocent of all four counts unless and until proven guilty. Nothing in this story should be read as a finding of fact beyond what the indictment alleges and what she herself has told reporters on the record.
Migliore has not retained a lawyer. She told NOLA.com she cannot afford one. Speaking to the paper on the record, she offered an explanation that amounts to a claim of honest mistake rather than a denial that she registered and voted.
“I just considered myself a citizen. I just didn't realize that it was such a big deal.”
Denise Nataly Migliore · to NOLA.com
She also described the 2024 in-person vote at the St. Tammany Parish Government Building, saying poll workers “were very polite to me, very welcoming,” and that they scanned her identification but never asked about her citizenship. She framed the prosecution itself as disproportionate to what she describes as her own confusion.
“I feel like I'm being used as a guinea pig to show how flawed the electoral system is.”
Denise Nataly Migliore · to NOLA.com
The Epoch Times identifies Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Veters as the prosecutor handling the case for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana, led by U.S. Attorney David I. Courcelle, a Trump appointee sworn in in December 2025. The office's public statement announcing the indictment lays out the charges and statutory maximums but does not include a personal quote from Courcelle himself.
This case did not start with Migliore. It started in May 2025, when Louisiana became the first state in the country to run its entire voter registration file through DHS's revamped SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database. That review, announced in September 2025, found roughly 390 noncitizens registered to vote statewide, of whom about 79 had cast at least one ballot dating back to the 1980s — out of a voter roll of roughly 2.9 to 3 million registered Louisianans.
Secretary of State Nancy Landry (R), who ordered the review, has publicly framed the Migliore indictment as validation of that effort — while also being careful, elsewhere, not to overstate what the numbers show.
“The federal indictment of Denise Nataly Migliore… is the direct result of Louisiana's proactive efforts to identify and investigate individuals who may be unlawfully registered to vote. We hope this is just the first indictment with more to come.”
Nancy Landry (R), Louisiana Secretary of State
But Landry has also said, on the record, that the scale of the problem should not be exaggerated. Her office's own position — reported by the Brennan Center for Justice — is that the audit did not turn up evidence of widespread fraud in Louisiana elections.
“Non-citizens illegally registering or voting is not a systemic problem in Louisiana.” — Secretary of State Nancy Landry (R), as reported by the Brennan Center for Justice.
That statement, from the same official touting the Migliore indictment as a model for other states, is why this story treats the case as exactly what it is: one indictment, not proof of an epidemic. Roughly 79 noncitizens who had voted at least once, some dating back over four decades, is a real enforcement finding out of a roll of nearly 3 million registered voters — not a sign that Louisiana's elections have been compromised at scale.
Louisiana ran its voter rolls through DHS's SAVE database — the first state in the nation to do so. The review identified individuals who may be unlawfully registered to vote, and we referred those cases for investigation.
Louisiana continues to lead the nation on election security — proactive audits, real referrals, real prosecutions, not just talk.
The same day Fox News reported on Migliore's arrest — July 7, 2026 — the Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, sent letters to election officials in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., warning them of potential criminal liability for knowingly keeping noncitizens on their voter rolls. Votebeat, which obtained and reported on the letters, found no indication they were prompted by the Migliore case specifically — the timing appears to be a coincidence of two DOJ election-integrity efforts landing on the same news day, not a coordinated announcement.
“Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state's [voter registration list]… could be subject to criminal liability.”
Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Civil Rights Division · letter to state election officials, July 7, 2026
Two numbers get cited nationally in this debate, and both need a caveat attached. On one side, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled in June 2026 that DHS's revamped SAVE system was “arbitrary and capricious” and found that it had also mis-flagged U.S. citizens as noncitizens — a real problem for any national figure, sometimes cited in the 21,000-to-24,000-flagged range, that gets pulled from SAVE's output. That figure is disputed and under legal challenge, not a clean, settled count. On the other side, the scale of the underlying phenomenon itself is contested: the Brennan Center for Justice's oft-cited 2016 study found roughly 30 suspected noncitizen-voting incidents out of 23.5 million votes cast, while the Heritage Foundation's own database lists 99 noncitizen-voting cases nationwide since 2000. Neither figure resolves the question; both are cited here with their source attached rather than presented as agreed fact.
Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting, other than for those that are very ill, or in the Armed Forces, and Paper Ballots. We need the SAVE Act, NOW!
Posted months before the Migliore indictment, on the broader push for the SAVE America Act — not a statement about this case. Verified via presidency.ucsb.edu.
The Migliore case is not an isolated federal charging pattern, either. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey has separately charged multiple noncitizens with illegally voting in federal elections and making false citizenship statements to register — the same two statutes at issue in Louisiana, applied in a different state, under a different U.S. Attorney's Office.
Nothing here is resolved. Migliore has not entered a plea, has no attorney of record as of this writing, and is presumed innocent on all four counts. No trial date has been set. Whatever she says publicly about her own state of mind in 2022 and 2024, it is prosecutors — not her account to NOLA.com — who will have to prove the false-citizenship claims and the illegal votes beyond a reasonable doubt.
What is resolved is the process that produced the charge: Louisiana ran its rolls through a federal database, found roughly 390 noncitizens registered and about 79 who had voted at least once, referred cases for investigation, and a grand jury indicted at least one of them. Landry wants that replicated in other states. Whether it should be depends on a fact her own office has already conceded — that whatever this audit found, it is not evidence Louisiana's elections have been compromised at scale.
A federal grand jury alleges Denise Nataly Migliore, an Australian national with no attorney and no plea entered, falsely claimed U.S. citizenship to register and vote in two federal elections. She says she never realized it mattered. Louisiana's own Secretary of State says the case validates her office's audit — and, in the same breath, says noncitizen voting is not a systemic problem in her state. Both things can be true. The indictment settles nothing yet; it is an allegation, not a verdict.
