For years, Democrats and their allies in the media told Americans that noncitizen voting was a myth.
Then this court case exploded.
And now that the evidence is sitting right there in a federal court record, the same crowd that denied the problem exists is working overtime to block every tool that could prevent it from happening again.
A Guilty Plea That Cuts Through the Noise
Homero Ramos, 45, of Haleyville, Alabama, pleaded guilty before US District Judge Edmund G LaCour Jr to two counts of fraudulent voting. According to the indictment, Ramos is a lawful permanent resident but never obtained US citizenship.
Despite that, Ramos registered to vote and voted — even though he knew that only US citizens are permitted to do so under Alabama law. He voted in both the 2022 and 2024 general elections.
Two elections. Two illegal ballots. And this is just the one case that made it to a guilty plea.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen’s office partnered with DHS, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama on the investigation and ultimately referred the case of Ramos to the Department of Justice.
Homeland Security Investigations led the case, with the assistance of the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation.
But the Ramos case did not appear out of thin air. It came out of a years-long fight by Alabama’s Secretary of State to clean up voter rolls that the Biden administration spent years trying to stop him from touching.
Biden Blocked It, Trump Unlocked It
The battle played out in Alabama over several years when Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen identified 3,251 individuals in 2023 who were registered to vote in Alabama and had been issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security.
At the time, Allen said he was repeatedly denied help from the Biden administration. He also noted it was possible for some of the individuals to have become naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote, and said his office would allow them to update their information and participate in the process.
His efforts to clean up the voter rolls were blocked in court during the Biden administration, but under President Donald Trump, Allen was able to have 186 noncitizens who were registered to vote removed from the state’s voter file in January 2026.
Allen partnered with the federal government to gain access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which is a program used to identify noncitizens registered to vote in different states. That program was also blocked by a federal judge in June.
Read that again. A federal judge blocked the very tool Allen was using to catch illegal voters — even after that tool had already produced a guilty plea.
During the investigation, Allen’s office indicated that 25 of those 186 noncitizens not only registered, but also voted in elections.
“Our elections must be decided by American citizens and only American citizens,” Allen said. “While liberal organizations and media outlets claim noncitizen voting is not a problem, my office has proven otherwise. Under my watch, illegal registration and illegal voting by noncitizens will not be tolerated in Alabama.”
“Earlier this year, my Office referred 25 noncitizens who illegally voted in Alabama elections to federal law enforcement authorities. A noncitizen residing in Marion County, who registered to vote prior to my election as Secretary of State, has pleaded guilty to two counts of fraudulent voting,” Allen said in a statement. “My Office will continue our efforts to identify noncitizens illegally registered to vote and voting in our elections and I will refer them to law enforcement and ensure that they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I am thankful that President Trump shares my zero-tolerance policy for noncitizen voting and for his DOJ’s particular attention to election integrity.”
And Ramos was not the only noncitizen caught voting in Alabama this year.
In January 2026, a federal grand jury in Birmingham charged a Canadian man after he violated Alabama law by voting in multiple elections as a noncitizen. A four-count indictment filed in US District Court charges Franc Neil Maloney with fraudulent voting. According to the indictment, Maloney is a lawful permanent resident who lives in Blount County but has never obtained US citizenship. Despite this, Maloney registered to vote and voted — even though he knew that only US citizens are permitted to do so under Alabama law. Maloney voted in every major election since registering, including primary and general elections in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024.
At the time of the charges, 71-year-old Franc Neil Maloney was out on bond for an unrelated case involving 187 counts of child pornography and four counts of dissemination of child pornography, per local news reports.
So Alabama produced two confirmed noncitizen voting cases in the span of a few months. One man from Mexico, one from Canada. Both lawful permanent residents. Both fully aware they were breaking the law.
The SAVE America Act and the Senate That Won’t Act
Republicans in Congress have been trying to close the loopholes that allowed this to happen. The SAVE America Act has passed three times in the House but has been hamstrung in the Senate. The bill would fight election fraud by requiring individuals to provide proof of US citizenship while registering to vote in federal elections, which could include a birth certificate or passport.
Republicans contend the SAVE America Act would prevent these kinds of cases by requiring proper proof of citizenship up front, rather than relying solely on verification systems and voter-roll clean-up efforts.
Rep Riley Moore (R-WV) told Breitbart News this month that election integrity remains a major concern among Republican voters, calling it “a core tenet” of why Republicans “won in 2024” and saying the issue comes up at “any Lincoln Reagan Day dinner in any county in America.” Moore added that the concern spans “moderate to MAGA” Republicans who do not understand “why you can’t get this done.”
Moore said it is “frustrating” for House members to watch the Senate fail to act, contending that “we are constantly consistently held hostage to the inaction of the Senate.” “We have passed the Save America Act three times in the House,” Moore said, adding that the SAVE Act is “going to be attached to the National Defense Authorization Act.”
President Donald Trump passionately called again for passing the SAVE America Act during his Fourth of July speech to thousands of people in Washington, DC. He has previously called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to use the talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, which Thune has not committed to.
The Senate’s failure to act is not a procedural footnote. Every month the bill sits stalled is another election cycle where the current patchwork system stays in place — the same system that let Homero Ramos cast ballots in two consecutive general elections before anyone caught it.
Democrats have blocked the SAVE America Act at every turn, and the reason is not complicated. They are not trying to protect legal voters from paperwork burdens. They are trying to keep a registration system loose enough that noncitizens can slip through it — because the people most likely to slip through it are also the people most likely to vote Democrat if they do. Blocking proof-of-citizenship requirements is not about civil liberties. It is about protecting a voter pool.
The Alabama cases make the argument for the SAVE America Act better than any floor speech could. The existing honor system — where voters simply check a box claiming citizenship — relies entirely on people following a law that some of them clearly have no intention of following. Ramos knew it was illegal. He did it anyway. Maloney knew it was illegal. He did it for eight years straight.
And the tool that finally caught them — the SAVE verification program — just got blocked by a federal judge. So the system that failed to stop the crime is still in place, and the system that exposed it has been shut down. That is where things stand heading into the 2026 midterms.
President Trump and his DOJ are doing the work. They are prosecuting cases, building interagency partnerships, and pushing Congress to pass legislation that would make these prosecutions unnecessary in the first place. The Senate owes the American people a vote.
Sources: US Department of Justice, Northern District of Alabama; Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen official statements; Breitbart News; ABC 33/40 Birmingham; IRS Criminal Investigation press release; Breitbart News Daily interview with Rep Riley Moore (R-WV)