Federal agents arrested a Bahamian green card holder in Georgia after investigators determined he voted illegally in the 2020 election, a man DHS says also carries a lengthy record of violent crimes including armed robbery and assault on a police officer.
Homeland Security Investigations agents out of the Atlanta field office took Anthony Tyrone Higgs into custody on September 3 in Decatur, Georgia. HSI confirmed in a statement that Higgs, a lawful permanent resident admitted to the United States in October 1976, had voted illegally in the 2020 presidential election. He is now held by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, and DHS has opened proceedings to strip his immigration status.
The case drew immediate comment from the White House and DHS leadership, who framed Higgs as a case study in what happens when noncitizens exploit gaps in the election system, and when violent offenders are allowed to remain in the country long enough to do it.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin laid out the charges in blunt terms. Mullin said:
"This criminal alien from the Bahamas has a rap sheet for multiple violent crimes, including armed robbery, domestic violence, and assault on a police officer. On top of all of that, he illegally voted in the 2020 election."
Higgs' criminal record, as described by DHS, includes armed robbery, domestic violence, assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, two counts of grand larceny, and two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime. That is not the profile of someone who slipped through the cracks once. It is the profile of someone the system failed to remove for decades.
Mullin added that ICE agents deserve credit for the outcome.
"Thanks to the hard work of the men and women of ICE, this criminal will be removed from our country and can never interfere in our elections again."
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis went further in an exclusive statement, drawing a direct line between Higgs' criminal conduct and his forfeiture of the privilege of living in the United States. Bis said:
"This alien was a guest in our country who forfeited his right to be in the U.S. when he committed these violent crimes and voted in the 2020 election."
She followed with a warning aimed beyond the Higgs case: "Any noncitizens who vote illegally in our elections will be arrested and removed. American elections are only for Americans."
The broader concern is not hypothetical. DHS has previously identified 278,000 noncitizens on voter rolls nationwide, a figure that underscores just how porous the system remains.
The administration did not present Higgs as a one-off. DHS pointed to a string of recent enforcement actions involving noncitizens who allegedly cast ballots in American elections, spanning multiple states and multiple election cycles.
In August, a Colombian illegal immigrant named Carlos Jaramillo-Grajales was sentenced to three years in federal prison following an ICE investigation. Jaramillo-Grajales pleaded guilty after authorities found he had committed identity theft to vote illegally in U.S. elections for more than 20 years. That case was prosecuted out of the Middle District of Florida, where U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe issued a statement.
Kehoe said: "Federal immigration laws serve to safeguard our nation's borders and protect the integrity of our government. Those who seek to circumvent, exploit, or break these laws will be prosecuted fully."
The Jaramillo-Grajales sentencing fits a growing pattern of criminal consequences for noncitizen voting fraud that the current administration has made a priority.
Then there is Mahady Sacko, a Mauritanian national arrested in Philadelphia through a joint ICE-FBI operation. Sacko was charged with voter fraud for allegedly casting illegal ballots multiple times going back to 2008. DHS stated that an immigration board had upheld a removal order against Sacko as far back as 2002, meaning he spent more than two decades in the country despite being ordered out, and allegedly voted throughout much of that time.
That timeline is worth pausing on. Sacko exhausted all his appeals by 2002. He was supposed to leave. He stayed. And while he stayed, he allegedly voted in election after election. The system that was supposed to remove him did not. The system that was supposed to prevent him from voting did not either.
DHS also cited cases outside the major metro areas that typically dominate the headlines. A Slovakian national was found to have voted illegally in the 2022 midterm elections in New Jersey. An Australian national stands accused of illegally casting ballots in both 2022 and 2024 in Louisiana. Details on the current status of charges in those cases were not provided.
New Jersey's vulnerabilities are not new. The state's own records have revealed thousands of noncitizen voter registrations that exposed systemic gaps no state has been forced to close.
Each of these cases involves a different country of origin, a different state, and a different election cycle. What they share is a common failure: noncitizens who were either never removed or never screened out of the voter rolls managed to cast ballots that canceled out the votes of American citizens. As Mullin put it, one noncitizen casting a ballot is enough to cancel out an American citizen's vote.
Enforcement actions like these have accelerated under the current administration. ICE recently arrested a Peruvian national who admitted voting illegally in a 2024 Kansas election, and Michigan has charged six individuals over illegal voting in the 2024 election, cases that illustrate a trend of prosecutions following voter roll audits and cross-referencing with immigration databases.
Higgs entered the United States lawfully in October 1976. He held a green card. At some point, he accumulated a violent criminal record that, under federal law, should have triggered removal proceedings long before he ever reached a ballot box. Armed robbery alone can be grounds for deportation of a lawful permanent resident. So can domestic violence. So can assault on a law enforcement officer.
Yet Higgs remained. He was not removed after the armed robbery conviction. He was not removed after the domestic violence charge. He was not removed after assaulting a police officer. He was not removed after two counts of grand larceny or two counts of possessing a weapon during a violent crime. And in 2020, he voted.
The question that DHS did not answer, and that the available facts do not resolve, is how Higgs registered to vote in the first place, or how the system failed to flag a green card holder with a violent criminal record when he showed up on the rolls. Green card holders are not eligible to vote in federal elections. The mechanism by which HSI determined he had voted was not disclosed.
Nor is it clear whether Higgs faces formal criminal charges for the illegal vote or whether the government's action is purely administrative, revocation of status and deportation. The distinction matters. A criminal conviction sends a message that illegal voting carries prison time. An administrative removal, while consequential, carries less deterrent weight.
Every one of these cases raises the same uncomfortable question: how many more are out there? DHS has shown it can find them when it looks. The problem is how long the country went without looking, and how many elections passed in the meantime.
