The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that Jose Ceballos-Armendariz, a Mexican national and former mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, pleaded guilty to three counts of disorderly election conduct in a voter fraud case.
According to a DHS press release, Ceballos-Armendariz unlawfully voted multiple times in U.S. elections and falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen on voter registration forms. DHS also said he made false statements on a naturalization application. He was granted a green card in 1990 and had a prior battery conviction in 1995.
Ceballos-Armendariz served two terms as mayor of Coldwater, according to Fox News. The case was prosecuted by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach’s office after the SAVE program flagged him as a noncitizen on voter rolls. The plea agreement included a $2,000 fine and a six-month suspended sentence.
Since April 2025, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program has identified more than 24,000 cases of potential non-U.S. citizens on voter rolls and referred them to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, according to DHS. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has processed over 60 million voter verification queries through the program.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is the federal agency responsible for immigration enforcement and border security. Its component, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, runs the SAVE program, which verifies immigration status for voter registration, according to the department’s website.