19 Aliens Charged with Illegal Voting in 2016: The tip of the illegal immigration iceberg — of unknown proportions.

On August 27, 2018 the DHS website posted a report, 19 foreign nationals indicted for illegally voting in 2016 elections that began with this paragraph:

WILMINGTON, N.C. – Nineteen foreign nationals were charged with unlawfully voting in the 2016 elections Friday, and a U.S. citizen was charged with aiding and abetting an alien to falsely claim U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The indictments follow an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) as part of a newly created Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force (DBFTF) in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

On the following day, on August 28th, the Justice Department issued a press release about the very same case, Nineteen Foreign Nationals Charged for Voting in 2016 Election and added:

Multiple Defendants Voted In More Than One Election.

This press release reporting on the actions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raises a number of significant issues that we will explore today.

First, however, I am compelled to note that I wrote about the newly-created Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force in my June 15, 2018 article, Trump Administration Opens Office To Find Naturalization Fraudsters in which I noted that this was a great first step, but much needs to be done.

The nineteen aliens who were the subject of the DOJ and DHS press releases were investigated by the Trump administration’s newly-created counter-fraud operation which hired additional attorneys and immigration officers to review the cases of aliens who had been ordered deported but then are believed to have assumed false identities to become lawful immigrants and subsequently acquire U.S. citizenship under their false identities by defrauding the naturalization process.  Under the provisions of 8 U.S. Code § 1451 such alien’s naturalization can be revoked and the alien may also be criminally prosecuted for having committed such fraud.

Shortly after being elected, President Trump was sharply rebuked for his assertion that aliens voted during the election.   In reality aliens have voted.  The problem is the difficulty of detecting aliens who vote, a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 611 and the related crime of aliens making false claims to United States citizenship, a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 911.

A commonsense strategy to combat voter fraud includes requiring that voters show appropriate identification when they vote.

However, while it may be a routine requirement for people to provide authentic identity documents to cash a check, make a significant credit card purchase, board and airliner or enter an office building, many cities and states do not require ID for voting.

Democrats who have repeatedly accused the Trump administration of colluding with the Russians in the run-up to the 2016 elections have steadfastly opposed requiring voters to show identification when they vote, cynically claiming that such a requirement would “suppress voting” of the poor and members of minority communities.

Of course, voter ID requirements might well suppress the illegal voting of aliens.

Voter ID requirements would help imbue the voting system with integrity, but then the mere mention of the word “integrity” is enough to cause those  politicians and their supporters to, as Clint Eastwood put it in one of his films, “go into vapor lock.”

The crime of false claim to U.S citizenship falls under the broad category of immigration fraud which also includes include the production of fraud identity and supporting documents used in conjunction with applications for visas and immigration benefits.  Immigration fraud also includes schemes that generally involve criminal conspiracies such as marriage fraud wherein an alien marries a U.S. citizen or lawful immigrant in order to be able to be granted resident alien status.

Immigration fraud is a major issue that, until the election of President Trump, went largely ignored even though the 9/11 Commission identified immigration fraud as the key entry and embedding tactic of terrorists.  This fact served as the predication for an extensive article and a booklet I wrote on the topic of immigration fraud under the common title, Immigration Fraud, Lies That Kill.

Immigration fraud undermines the integrity of the immigration system as well as national security and was also the topic of the very first Congressional hearing in which I participated back on May 20, 1997 when the topic of that hearing was, Visa Fraud and Immigration Benefits Application Fraud.  That hearing was conducted by the House Subcommittee in Immigration and Claims and was predicated on two deadly terror attacks carried out in the United States by aliens in 1993 at the CIA and at the first deadly attack at the World Trade Center.

Illegal aliens who make false claims to United States citizenship may do so for a number of reasons including a desire to not be deported from the United States.  When I attended the U.S. Border Patrol Academy when I hired on as an Immigration Inspector one of the skills that were taught as a part of the curriculum was detecting and breaking false claims to United States citizenship. (Back then all INS personnel who enforced and/or administered the laws contained within the Immigration and Nationality Act went for training at the Border Patrol Academy that was then located in Los Fresnos, Texas just across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Matomoros.)

To my knowledge no other law enforcement academy provides such training.

I addressed the crime of  False Claims To U.S. Citizenship in my May 15, 2017 article and noted that it was far from a “victimless crime.”

As for the nineteen aliens who have been charged, they are from countries around the world including Mexico, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, the Philippines, Panama, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Italy, Germany, Poland, Korea and Japan.

The diversity of these 19 defendants, who are citizens from countries scattered around the world, illustrates that the issue of illegal immigration is not limited to Mexico or even Latin America but involves aliens from around the world.

Nevertheless, pollsters, pundits and politicians insist that for politicians to win the mythical “Latino vote” they must support open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Add this bogus claim to the other lies and propaganda foisted on Americans by the globalists who seek to dismantle our nation’s borders and immigration law enforcement.

The problem is that we have no way of knowing how many aliens falsely claim to be citizens of the United States.  We don’t, for example, know how many inmates in prisons are actually U.S. citizens or aliens.  Of course the fingerprints of aliens who are arrested by law enforcement agencies who had been previously processed for visas or immigration benefits should disclose their immigration status and the fact that they are aliens.  However, no record of entry and not fingerprints are obtained from aliens who enter the United States without inspection by running our borders or stowing away on vessels.

It is extremely unlikely that jails that operate in “Sanctuary Cities” seek to uncover false claims to U.S. citizenship made by inmates who want to be released back into their communities when they complete their prison sentences rather than be deported back to their home countries.

It must be presumed that prison officials have never had the training to identify aliens who masquerade as U.S. citizens.  In point of fact, it is likely that they don’t even bother asking inmates about their citizenship.  With ICE agents barred from entering these facilities, it is quite likely that anyone falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen is not challenged by the authorities.  This would encourage more aliens to falsely claim to be U.S. citizens.

Two problems then arise from this “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

First of all, aliens who succeed in falsely claim to be U.S. citizens are likely counted as U.S. citizens by the jail officials and not as aliens, thereby lowering the number of identified criminal aliens who are incarcerated.

Additionally, these aliens who successfully make false claims to U.S. citizenship, are far less likely to be sought by ICE when they are released after their jail sentences are completed.

Back on the street these criminal aliens endanger members of their ethnic immigrant communities.

Having made mention of undercounting of aliens in prisons, it is entirely likely that the number of aliens who vote is much, much higher than can be determined.

As I noted earlier in my article, where immigration is concerned, the policy of not seeking to uncover fraud means that there is no way of ever determining the true magnitude of the immigration crisis from virtually every perspective.

While nineteen alien voters is a relatively minuscule number, there is no way of knowing how many other aliens may have similarly illegally cast ballots.  We are standing at the edge of a mirky pool and the depth of that pool is unknowable.

In the game of hide and seek, where aliens are concerned, far too many politicians refuse to permit their officials seek.  They are also determined to make certain that the federal government will be able to seek either via the creation of “Sanctuary Cities.”

This is known as obstruction of governmental administration and has serious implications for a host of challenges and threats America and Americans face in this dangerous era.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump’s New Executive Order Is a Positive Step for Securing Elections.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

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