ICE arrests Bahamian national with violent criminal record for voting illegally in 2020 election

Federal agents arrested a Bahamian national with convictions for armed robbery, domestic violence, and assault on a police officer after investigators confirmed he voted illegally in the 2020 election, the latest in a growing string of noncitizen voter fraud cases.

Anthony Tyrone Higgs, a lawful permanent resident who entered the United States in October 1976, was taken into custody on September 3 in Decatur, Georgia, by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents out of the Atlanta field office. He remains in federal immigration custody, and the Department of Homeland Security has moved to strip his green card and deport him.

HSI Atlanta confirmed in August that Higgs had voted illegally in the 2020 general election. The Daily Caller first reported the arrest, citing documents it obtained related to the case.

Armed robbery, domestic violence, and a badge of convictions spanning decades

Higgs' criminal record is not a single blemish. He has been convicted of two counts of grand larceny, armed robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, assault on a police officer, criminal domestic violence, and resisting arrest. DHS is now using that record as the basis for removal proceedings.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin did not hold back in a written statement to the Daily Caller:

"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. If even one non-citizen votes in our elections, it cancels out the vote of an American citizen. 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."

That statement captures the administration's posture on noncitizen voting in plain terms: one illegal vote erases one lawful citizen's ballot. Whether the total number of such cases is large or small, the principle holds. Every fraudulent vote dilutes the franchise of someone who followed the rules.

The White House reinforced that message. Spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News, "Any noncitizens who vote illegally in our elections will be arrested and removed. American elections are only for Americans."

Higgs is not the only noncitizen caught voting this month

Two days before Higgs was arrested, federal agents picked up Mariana Alexandra Dewey, a Peruvian national, on September 1. Dewey allegedly misrepresented herself as a U.S. citizen to vote in the 2024 general election in Kansas. She faces four federal charges: one count of false claim of citizenship, one count of false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to vote, one count of fraudulent election conduct, and one count of voting by an alien in a federal election.

The Dewey case underscores a pattern. These are not administrative mix-ups or paperwork errors. Claiming to be a citizen in order to cast a ballot is an affirmative act of fraud, one that carries federal criminal penalties.

The Department of Justice has been putting all 50 states on notice that noncitizen voting will draw prosecution, a signal that the federal government intends to treat these cases as serious offenses rather than footnotes.

Fox News cited additional cases beyond Higgs and Dewey, including a Colombian national sentenced to three years for using identity theft over more than two decades to vote illegally. Other cases surfaced in New Jersey, Louisiana, and Philadelphia.

DHS built the enforcement pipeline months before these arrests

The Higgs arrest did not come out of nowhere. The administration laid the groundwork over the summer. In June, DHS formally directed ICE to enforce stricter penalties for noncitizens who vote illegally in American elections, including deportation. That directive made clear the agency would treat illegal voting not as a minor immigration infraction but as grounds for removal.

In July, Secretary Mullin followed up by sending letters to secretaries of state in several states, warning them about noncitizens who appeared on voter rolls. The same month, FEMA announced that grant recipients would be required to take actions related to election security, a move that extended the administration's election integrity push beyond immigration enforcement and into the broader federal grant apparatus.

That sequence, directive in June, state-level warnings in July, confirmed illegal voting in August, arrest in September, shows a deliberate enforcement chain, not a one-off headline grab. Each step built on the last.

Similar federal charges have already landed in other states. The DOJ charged an illegal immigrant with voting in a federal election in New Jersey, adding to the growing catalog of cases that critics once dismissed as vanishingly rare.

Fifty years as a green card holder, and this is how it ends

Higgs entered the country as a lawful permanent resident nearly fifty years ago. He held a green card, a privilege that millions of immigrants worldwide wait years to obtain. That status gave him the right to live and work in the United States. It did not give him the right to vote.

A green card holder who commits serious crimes and then casts an illegal ballot has, by the government's reckoning, forfeited the trust that lawful permanent residency represents. DHS is now moving to revoke that status entirely.

The broader political fight over election integrity has intensified in recent years. President Trump has left the door open to a national emergency declaration on voting as legislative efforts like the SAVE Act have stalled in the Senate, signaling that the executive branch may act where Congress has not.

Meanwhile, questions about election security continue to surface at the state level. The FBI's termination of two analysts who questioned a Fulton County 2020 election probe raised its own set of concerns about how federal agencies handle internal dissent on election-related investigations.

Open questions the government has not answered

Several details remain unclear. DHS has not said whether Higgs faces separate criminal charges for illegal voting or whether the government is pursuing this solely as an immigration removal case. The method HSI Atlanta used to confirm his illegal vote, whether through voter rolls, ballot records, or some other investigative tool, has not been disclosed publicly.

It is also unclear how many elections Higgs may have voted in beyond 2020, or whether investigators are examining his participation in earlier cycles. Those gaps matter. If the enforcement apparatus can confirm one illegal vote, the logical question is whether there were others, and whether the systems that should have caught it failed for years.

For now, Higgs sits in ICE custody. Removal proceedings are underway. And the administration has made its position unmistakable: noncitizens who vote will be found, arrested, and removed.

American elections belong to American citizens. Enforcing that principle is not controversial, it is the bare minimum.