Noncitizen voting cases in eastern Idaho among first to be prosecuted in state in years
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Kyle Pfannenstiel, Idaho Capital Sun
BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — In the weeks leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, the Trump administration announced it is prosecuting three alleged noncitizen voting cases in Idaho.
The cases appear to be the first instances of the federal government prosecuting noncitizen voting cases in Idaho under the second Trump administration. They came more than a year after state election officials referred more than a dozen cases to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible prosecution.
The Justice Department has recently ramped up prosecutions of noncitizen voting, which studies have consistently shown rarely occurs.
Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, an elected Republican, said in an interview that the two Canadian cases being prosecuted stem from referrals from that began with his office.
“I’m actually relieved,” he said in an interview in mid-October. “I think there’s been a lot of dialogue between us, the Attorney General’s Office, and Department of Justice.”
In Idaho, the cases include two Canadian citizens who live in eastern Idaho who federal prosecutors allege illegally voted in the 2022 general election, and a Mexican citizen who allegedly voted in the 2022 primary election and the 2024 general election, when the president was on the ballot.
The prosecution for the three Idaho cases is being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho, which houses Idaho’s federal prosecutors and is part of the Justice Department. Former Idaho legislator John Shirts was named as the new U.S. Attorney for the District of Idaho on Oct. 19 after the retirement of Bart Davis, who was serving his second term under Trump.
But this week, McGrane said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho has said it does not intend to prosecute another 13 cases referred by Idaho officials, which stemmed from his office’s 2024 audit of the state’s voter roll. The state referred about 15 cases to the federal government for prosecution. But McGrane said his office recently flagged two more potential noncitizens on the state’s voter roll that it is in the early stages of evaluating.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho did not comment on the update, saying its office “does not comment on investigations whether they are pending or current.”
Legal defense firms for each of the defendants in the Idaho cases declined to comment.
The Idaho prosecution cases of noncitizen voting
The cases referred by Idaho officials to the federal government for prosecution were two Canadian citizens who had allegedly voted in the 2022 general election, when congressional seats and all statewide offices were up for election.
One of the defendants, Taralynn Kathleen Bosco, was living in Rexburg, and the other defendant, Stanley Richard Walton, was living in Chubbuck, according to federal prosecutors. Both are charged with voting by alien, a class A misdemeanor that carries up to a year in prison, up to $100,000 in fines and a year of supervised release. The Pocatello Federal Defender, which is representing each of the defendants, declined to comment. Their charges were filed on Oct. 7.
In 2022, GOP secretary of state candidate Dorothy Moon, then a state lawmaker, on the House floor said that she’d heard that people from Canada had been entering the state and voting. She now serves as chairwoman of the Idaho Republican Party. McGrane narrowly defeated her in a three-way race in the 2022 primary election.
The case of the third defendant — Fredy Avila Gomez from Mexico, who was not referred for prosecution by the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office — was investigated by several federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, said U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho spokesperson Jason Densley. Federal prosecutors charged Avila Gomez with several crimes beyond ineligible voting, such as wire fraud, theft of government funds, false statement of citizenship in order to vote and unlawful possession of a firearm.
In his indictment, he is charged with voting in the 2022 primary election In Idaho, when statewide officials and congressional seats were up, as well as the 2024 general election, when President Donald Trump was up for election, along with congressional seats in Idaho and other races. Prosecutors allege he used a fraudulent California birth certificate to get an Idaho identification card and a federal passport, and that he fraudulently received Medicaid from 2020 to 2026.
The Justice Department announced his prosecution along with other election crime cases on Sept. 18. The Justice Department’s news release of the cases included a photo of Avila Gomez being detained, with his face blurred, by agents of the federal Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
His attorney, Christopher Sanchez with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho, declined to comment.
State referred batch of noncitizen voting cases to Justice Department about a year ago, public record shows
Around August or September 2025, Idaho State Police referred about a dozen noncitizen voting cases to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho for possible prosecution, according to an internal email from an Idaho state election official that the Idaho Capital Sun obtained in a public records request.
The referrals trace back to a 2024 audit of all registered voters in Idaho, conducted by the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office.
In the lead up to the 2026 midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake, the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to intervene in state election processes, such as to restrict mail-in voting and obtain state voter rolls.
The Justice Department has lost 23 lawsuits that sought to force states to provide voter data. The Justice Department’s lawsuit against McGrane in Idaho remains on hold.
Under the second Trump administration, prosecutions for noncitizen voting have been sparse. In July, University of Idaho professor Benjamin Cover, who tracks such cases, said he had only found about two dozen prosecutions since Trump re-gained office, and none were in Idaho.
In a stern letter this summer after the Justice Department threatened to prosecute election officials if they let noncitizens vote in the midterms, a high-ranking attorney in the Idaho Attorney General’s Office asked the federal government for updates on about 15 noncitizen voting cases that the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office had referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
But shortly after McGrane’s attorney sent the federal government that letter, he said that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a report — at Trump’s request — that showed “Idaho has the cleanest voter rolls in the country of those states that had been checked.”
The report showed Idaho had 49 non-citizens on its voter rolls, compared to hundreds or thousands in other states surveyed that had accessed the federal agency’s citizenship database called SAVE. Idaho also had, according to the report, more than 4,300 dead people on its voter rolls. State officials say they routinely clean the registered voter list.
The federal government’s report’s total is higher than the roughly 15 noncitizens who were on voter rolls that Idaho officials referred to the federal government for possible prosecution last year.
Many experts also disagreed with the report’s topline claim: That more than a quarter million noncitizens were registered voters in just four states under review.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.