Denise Nataly Migliore, a 51-year-old permanent resident from Sydney, Australia, registered to vote in Louisiana on October 6, 2022 — then did it again on October 22, 2024. She cast ballots on November 8, 2022 and November 5, 2024. She is not an American citizen. On July 1, federal agents arrested her.
Four federal counts. Two for false registration statements. Two for illegal voting.
The indictment came out of New Orleans, where Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI worked alongside ICE and the Louisiana Secretary of State's office to build the case, according to United Voice. Migliore faces up to 5 years in federal prison, 3 years of supervised release, and fines up to $250,000. The agencies used the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database — known as SAVE — to confirm her noncitizen status.
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry's office identified 83 noncitizens who participated in state elections dating back to the 1980s. The standard rebuttal writes itself: noncitizen voting is statistically insignificant, below one-hundredth of one percent, a rounding error that doesn't affect outcomes. Officials trot out that fraction every time the subject comes up, and technically the math checks out.
But the math misses the point. The question was never whether noncitizen votes swing presidential elections by millions. The question was whether the system allows noncitizens to register and vote without being caught — and the answer, confirmed by federal indictment, is yes. Migliore voted in two consecutive general elections before anyone noticed. The SAVE database existed the entire time. Nobody ran the check until enforcement became a priority.
Acting Department of Homeland Security official Lauren Bis said it plainly: "Only United States citizens should choose American leaders." That's not a controversial statement. It's the law. The controversy is that it took this long to enforce it.
President Trump has made noncitizen voting a central enforcement priority, and cases like Migliore's are the direct result. Not hypothetical concerns. Not conspiracy theories. A woman from Sydney, registered twice, voted twice, caught by the federal agencies now tasked with actually looking.
The fraud was never a myth. The audits were.