578 Noncitizens Voted in DC’s June 2026 Election
Judicial Watch Asks Court to Defend Arizona’s Verification of Voter Citizenship
Judicial Watch Sues for Abdul El-Sayed Animal Euthanasia Records
Judicial Watch Sues over American Jailed in Russia for 12.5 Years
578 Noncitizens Voted in DC’s June 2026 Election
We received records from the District of Columbia Board of Elections revealing that 578 noncitizens voted in the Washington, DC, June 16, 2026, primary and special elections.
While federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, states and localities may allow noncitizens to vote in state and local elections. In 2023, the DC Council amended the District of Columbia Election Code of 1955 to allow all noncitizen residents, including illegal aliens, to vote in its local elections.
The records show 510 of the noncitizens who voted were registered Democrats. Four of the voters were registered Republicans; 55 were registered as “NPA” (National Progressives of America); seven were registered as “STG” (Statehood Green Party); and two were registered as “other.”
The noncitizen voter information was produced in response to a September 23, 2026, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sent by us and the District of Columbia Republican Party for:
Public records identifying the number of non-citizens who voted in the June 16, 2026, Primary and Special Election; including, information about the wards in which they are located, their party affiliation, and the designators for the ballots they received.
We previously uncovered that 388 noncitizens voted in DC’s November 2024 general election.
It is an outrage and insult to every American citizen, and may be a violation of federal law, that DC allowed 578 foreign nationals to vote. At a minimum, Congress must act to ensure elections in our nation’s capital are only decided by American citizens. And the Justice Department should immediately investigate whether noncitizens in DC are illegally voting in federal elections.
In July 2024, we reported that data from the DC Board of Elections revealed that 113 noncitizens voted in the June “2024 Presidential Primary.”
In May 2024, we received records from DC explaining to illegal aliens and other noncitizens how they can register to vote in local elections.
In July 2024, we uncovered records showing that, as of June 2024, 583 foreign nationals are registered to vote in Washington, DC. The records from the Board of Elections also confirmed that noncitizens can be election workers.
In December 2023, a notice letter was sent to election officials in the District of Columbia notifying them of evident violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The letter pointed out that DC publicly reported removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letter threatened a federal lawsuit unless the violations were corrected in a timely fashion. In response to our inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”
Judicial Watch Asks Court to Defend Arizona’s Verification of Voter Citizenship
We joined with Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) to file an amici curiae (friends of the court) brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling restricting Arizona’s authority to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and remove noncitizens from the registration list.
We filed the brief in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, et al. (No. 25-1017), a case concerning Arizona’s H.B. 2492, which required documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in state elections and to verify certain eligibility requirements to vote in federal elections. The Ninth Circuit held that the law violated the National Voter Registration Act (“NVRA”). The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in June, and oral argument is scheduled for December 8, 2026.
Our brief argues that under the Voter Qualifications Clause of the Constitution, states have sole authority to establish and verify voter qualifications, including citizenship, and that Congress cannot use its power under the Elections Clause and the NVRA to override that authority in state elections. Voter registration is more than an administrative process – it allows election officials to determine whether applicants meet eligibility requirements before Election Day:
Congress cannot usurp the state’s exclusive sovereign prerogative to adjudicate whether an applicant has presented satisfactory proof of those qualifications, such as residency or citizenship …
The brief explains that voter registration helps ensure that only qualified voters can vote and allows officials to verify eligibility before Election Day. It argues that when a state requires advance registration, it should be able to decide what proof is needed to establish that an applicant meets the state’s constitutional voting qualifications:
Before Election Day, state election officials verify qualifications so that on Election Day voting can proceed efficiently with limited challenges.
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Like all states, Arizona requires individuals to be citizens of the United States to be qualified to vote in its state and federal elections. Pursuant to its authority under the Constitution’s Voter Qualifications Clause, it mandates registrants to provide proof of their citizenship to vote in state elections.
The brief warns that allowing federal procedural regulation to prevent states from enforcing their own voter qualifications would upset the constitutional division of authority between the federal government and the states.
The Left is desperately opposed, contrary to law, to make it as easy as possible for foreign nationals to illegally vote in our elections. The Supreme Court should stand against this.
We are a national leader in election integrity and voting rights litigation, with a record of successful lawsuits enforcing constitutional redistricting standards and cleaning voter rolls nationwide.
Our lawsuits and legal actions have caused the removal of six million ineligible names from voter lists nationwide, including from Oregon, Colorado, Kentucky and New York City. Our legal pressure also resulted in voter roll clean-ups in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio.
In August 2026, we filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief to the Supreme Court supporting the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s petition for review of a Ninth Circuit decision that allows Hawaii to shield its statewide voter registration list from public disclosure. We are urging the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the Ninth Circuit ruling and overturn the decision, citing federal law designed to foster transparency that allows the use of voting rolls to uncover fraud and errors.
In July 2026, we announced that records from the Virginia Department of Elections showed the commonwealth cancelled 6,531 “declared noncitizen” voter registrations between June 2024 and June 2026.
Also in July 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice announced its intention to file a motion to intervene in our federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a California political candidate and a state political party against the State of California due to its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls as required by the NVRA.
A federal court in Illinois ruled that our lawsuit to force the cleaning of voter rolls may proceed in that state.
In January 2026, in a historic case we filed, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors who were before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.
In July 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit adopted the argument that we put forth with Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in our amici curiae brief when it upheld Alabama’s 2011 Photo Voter Identification Law.
The Allied Educational Foundation is a charitable and educational foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life through education. In furtherance of that goal, the Foundation has engaged in a number of projects, which include, but are not limited to, educational and health conferences domestically and abroad. AEF has partnered frequently with us to fight government and judicial corruption and to promote a return to ethics and morality in the nation’s public life.
Judicial Watch Sues for Abdul El-Sayed Animal Euthanasia Records
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, served as executive director and health officer of the Detroit Health Department in Detroit from 2015 until 2017. According to a Daily Mail report, nearly 4,680 dogs and cats were euthanized by Detroit Animal Care and Control during his tenure.
According to that same report, former animal control officer Brittany Roberts described the agency as a “dog slaughterhouse” and alleged unsanitary conditions, inadequate animal care, and failures to scan animals for microchips before they were euthanized. The city settled her whistleblower lawsuit for $63,000 in 2016.
We filed a Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the City of Detroit for records documenting the number of dogs and cats euthanized by Detroit Animal Care and Control when El-Sayed oversaw the city agency (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. City of Detroit (No. 26-018170)). The request also seeks records about euthanized animals after El-Sayed’s tenure for comparison purposes.
We sued after the City of Detroit failed to respond to an August 14, 2026, FOIA request to the City of Detroit Law Department for:
- Records reflecting the number of dogs and cats euthanized by Detroit Animal Care and Control from 2010 through 2025 on an annual basis.
- All directives, memoranda, and protocols received by Detroit Animal Care and Control from the Office of Detroit Health Director Abdul El-Sayed from January 2015 through December 2017 relating to euthanasia of dogs and/or cats.
We sent a follow-up letter inquiring about the status of the request on October 7, 2026. The city provided no substantive response to the FOIA request or the follow-up letter.
The public deserves answers about Detroit’s animal euthanasia practices during El-Sayed’s tenure. With an election approaching, Detroit should stop stonewalling and disclose these records so voters can examine the facts for themselves.
We are represented in this case by Robert Muise of The Muise Law Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Judicial Watch Sues over American Jailed in Russia for 12.5 Years
We filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, seeking records explaining why American citizen Jimmy Wilgus, sentenced to 12.5 years in a Russian penal colony, has not been designated as wrongfully detained (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:26-cv-03551)). The lawsuit seeks records under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s leadership.
Wilgus’ family alleges that he was convicted on false charges based on a coerced confession and fabricated evidence. On November 7, 2016, Wilgus, an American musician living in Russia with his Russian wife, was arrested and charged with indecent exposure in an area in Russia that Wilgus’s family said he has never visited, according to a March 31, 2023, report by CBS’s WUSA9.
We filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the State Department failed to respond to a July 22, 2026, FOIA request for:
All records related to the detention of American citizen James Vincent Wilgus in Russia. This request includes, but is not limited to, all records related to the proposed designation of Mr. Wilgus’ detention as “wrongful” as defined by the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act and all related records of communication between any official or employee of the Department of State and any other individual or entity.
In June 2024 we filed an initial FOIA lawsuit against the Biden State Department seeking similar records through 2024.
Since 2016, according to the Free Jimmy Wilgus website, Wilgus’s health has deteriorated and he has been transferred to several different prisons.
On October 5, 2026, New Jersey state Sen. Owen Henry introduced Senate Joint Resolution 160, urging the U.S. Department of State to secure Wilgus’ release by enforcing the Levinson Act.
A CBS news report titled “The Forgotten American” provides details:
Jimmy Wilgus, a musician from New Jersey, was in Russia in 2016 working on a movie soundtrack with a Russian film director when he was ambushed and thrown into a van…. His parents, Jim and Bella Wilgus, say their son was helping his stepdaughter get into a taxi just moments before he was grabbed…. The Wilgus family say Jimmy was forced to sign confession papers for a crime he did not commit.… The family says witnesses testified claiming Jimmy committed a crime in an area of Russia he had never even visited…. Jimmy Wilgus was sentenced to 12 years in prison after a reportedly closed-door trial, where his mother claims the [U.S.] embassy was not even allowed to attend.
The State Department has failed to provide records about its handling of the Wilgus case. We are suing again to find out what the government knows about this American’s imprisonment and why he remains without a wrongful-detention designation as reports of his deteriorating health continue.
Until next week,
