DHS, DOGE Work Together To Track Down Election Fraudsters

“Voter Rights” activists, like the leftists at the Brennan Center Justice, and their pals in the accomplice media have spent a lot of time and credibility telling us that foreign nationals never vote in U.S. elections. If they do, it’s extremely rare. A myth. 

But we’ve seen a lot of “extremely rare” pop up in recent years on the battleground of election integrity. 

“It amounts to a vanishingly rare phenomenon that is not going to impact the outcome of our elections in any real way, and where the people who actually are violating the law are held accountable,” Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center, a group of election integrity deniers that claims to be nonpartisan, told ABC News just days before November’s election. The organization is about as nonpartisan as ABC News is unbiased. 

Of course, it’s amazing what you’ll find — if you’re willing to look. 

President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is looking. 

‘She Wanted to Make a Difference’

This week, the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced charges against two Ukrainian women, a mother and a daughter, accused of voting in November’s presidential election. 

“In partnership with DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency], Immigration & Customs Enforcement arrested two Ukrainian nationals for illegally VOTING in the 2024 election,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to The Federalist. 

Svitlana Demydenko, 53, and her daughter, Yelyzaveta Demydenko, 22, appeared in federal court this week in West Palm Beach on charges of unlawfully voting in a presidential election as an illegal alien. In an affidavit provided to The Federalist, Special Agent of Homeland Security Investigations Ashley Olson details the alleged crimes. Olson states the Florida Supervisor of Elections revealed that the women registered to vote on Aug. 18. Svitlana and Yelyzaveta each voted on Oct. 31 in Boynton Beach, Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, the affidavit asserts. 

In consensual interviews with the suspects at their residence, Yelyzaveta said she accompanied her step-father and mother to vote at a library in Boynton Beach, Olson stated. Yelyzaveta told law enforcement authorities she had to show her ID to vote. She provided them with her voter registration card, claiming that “she voted in the election because she wanted to make a difference,” according to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint. 

“Svitlana Demydenko confirmed that she had registered to vote online a few months before she voted in November 2024,” the affidavit states. The Ukrainian woman claimed that she did not know that she couldn’t vote. 

She could not. The Demydenkos were admitted to the United States on nonimmigrant visas in April 2021, according to the affidavit. They became lawful permanent residents of the United States more than two years later. 

While permanent residents have the right to live and work in the U.S. through their alien registration cards, or “green cards,” they continue to hold citizenship of their native countries. And they are not allowed to vote in federal elections. Only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in U.S. elections, although several communities in left-led states allow foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, to vote in local elections. 

DOGE Assisting the ‘Wheels of Justice’

But an increasing number of noncitizens have been showing up on state voter registration rolls, even as Democrats and leftist “nonpartisan” organizations vehemently fight against passage of the SAVE Act, a bill that aims to ensure only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections. As my Federalist colleague Brianna Lyman reported earlier this week, the Department of Justice in recent weeks has charged multiple foreign nationals for illegally voting in U.S. elections. 

In one case, 32-year-old Uzbekistan national Sanjar Jamilov pleaded guilty to “conspiring to submit fraudulent voter registrations” in Florida, the DOJ announced Tuesday.

The plea agreement states that the 45-year-old Russian national Dmitry Shushlebin “hired Jamilov and others to submit more than 100 fraudulent voter registration applications to the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections in February and March 2023.” The applications were rejected after a county election supervisor detected fraud.

Homeland Security agents tracking election integrity crimes have gotten a huge assist of late from the seemingly omnipresent DOGE. Department official Antonio Gracias told NBC News that the government fat-and-fraud-fighter has referred 57 cases of potential voter fraud to the DOJ. 

Trump advisor and face of DOGE Elon Musk told Fox News Digital this week that the “wheels of justice turn slowly but, hopefully, surely.” 

“When we find cases of fraud, we refer those cases to the DOJ — it is not DOGE prosecuting anyone,” he said. 

‘You Will Face the Consequences’

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida said multiple agencies assisted in the case of the Ukrainian mother and daughter, including Homeland Security Investigations, DOGE, the Florida Department of State, Office of Election Crimes and Security, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, and the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service. 

As Musk put it, the wheels of justice turn slowly, particularly when it comes to election crimes. Foreign nationals vote in U.S. elections. That’s an indisputable fact. It happens more than leftist “voter rights” groups acknowledge. The Trump administration, unlike its predecessors, seems committed to investigating election law crimes and prosecuting them. 

“Under President Donald Trump, if you come to our country and break our laws, you will face the consequences,” Noem said. 

For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.