Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson won’t discuss how many illegal voters remain on the state’s bloated voter rolls, but recent reports suggest it’s a bigger problem than she’s willing to admit.
The same day Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini flagged nearly a dozen more noncitizens on Michigan’s voter rolls, online sleuths were highlighting numerous criminal illegal immigrants with active registrations, including some with a voting history spanning multiple elections.
The latter came from an exclusive report in the right-leaning sensationalist news site Gateway Pundit. The Midwesterner confirmed the specifics with public address databases online, a Department of Homeland Security database, and the CheckMyVote.org site run by conservative activist Phani Mantravadi, who recently won his lawsuit against Benson for blocking access to some aspects of his subscription to Michigan’s Qualified Voter File.
The records show six criminal illegal immigrants on DHS’ “Worst of the Worst” database arrested in Michigan have active voter registrations despite arrests by federal immigration officials, including two that have voted in multiple elections.
The voter registrations remain active despite their deportations last year and numerous assurances about clean voter rolls from Benson, who is overseeing her own election for governor as the Democratic frontrunner.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Detroit arrested Indra Gurung, an illegal immigrant from Bhutan, in Caledonia on June 27, 2025, noting at the time previous convictions for stalking, aggravated stalking, domestic violence, and operating while intoxicated.
Online records list Gurung’s address at 1850 Mapleview Street in Kentwood, Michigan, and CheckMyVote shows Gurung registered to vote at that address on March 15, 2017.
@ERODetroit and @HSIDetroit w/@FBIDetroit @DEADetroitDiv and @IRS_CI arrested Indra Gurung, an illegal alien from Bhutan in Caledonia, Mich. Gurung was arrested during a criminal search warrant and has previous convictions of stalking, agg. stalking, domestic violence and OWI. pic.twitter.com/RF8JXZzBPy
— ICE Detroit (@ERODetroit) June 27, 2025
The QVF records indicate Gurung voted on Election Day in both the 2022 midterm election and 2024 presidential election.
A DHS press release from August 15, 2025 that lists “a gang member, pedophiles, and drug traffickers” nabbed by immigration agents includes Wa Kong Lor, a “44-year-old illegal alien convicted for breaking and entering vehicle to steal property; controlled substance-deliver/manufacture (cocaine, heroin or another narcotic) less than 50 grams; weapons felony firearm; and weapons — dangerous weapon — carrying with unlawful intent.”
UPDATED— The U.S. government does not always publicly release full details for every arrest by @ICEgov, including identities or charges. However, here are a few named cases reported in the media from the past month or so:
Wa Kong Lor, a Hmong refugee from the outskirts of…
— Kaveh Taheri 🕊 (@MrJournaliste) September 29, 2025
Online records list Lor’s address at 68 Mathews Street in Pontiac, where CheckMyVote shows the Laos national was registered to vote on August 6, 2018, during Benson’s first term. Seven others are also registered to vote at the same address, including Lor’s wife Mai Yia Xiong, and all were registered during Benson’s tenure.
Mai Yia Xiong, and Hmong Democratic state lawmaker by the same name, Rep. Mia Xiong, D-Warren, leveraged Lor’s arrest to demonize ICE agents and call for his return, though he was “removed from our country and returned to Laos” last year, according to DHS.
Rep. Xiong sits on the House Election Integrity Committee, where she has also worked to undermine testimony from folks who have exposed voter fraud in Michigan.
Iranian illegal immigrant Afshin Masheli was arrested by ICE in Dearborn on June 25, 2025, based on a final order of removal from July 3, 2007, but was released on a writ of habeas corpus on January 22, 2026 because Iran doesn’t typically accept deported criminals.
Court records show Masheli, 67, was convicted of two sex crimes in 2003 and sentenced to “between 5 years and 6 months to 50 years” and “between 3 years to 15 years,” but was free again by June 2010.
CheckMyVote shows he was registered to vote at 8873 Gary Street in Dearborn on May 1, 2013, before voting in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential elections.
Senagaround Phenglavanh, a 47-year-old illegal immigrant from Laos, was also listed in ICE’s August 2025 press release, with a criminal history that includes a weapon offense, and amphetamine manufacturing, along with an affiliation with the Tiny Rascals Gang.
Online records indicate he lived at 13635 Pfent Street in Detroit, and CheckMyVote shows he registered to vote at that address on December 11, 2014, though he has no voting history.
ICE arrested Saithong Thammachanh, an illegal immigrant from Laos, in Muskegon in October 2025, and posts to Facebook by his daughter, Jessica Thammachanh suggest he was deported months later.
“He’s not a citizen, he came to America as a refugee and had it revoked in 2001 for a felony drug charge he got in 1988 when he was still really young,” she wrote.
Online records list Thammachanh’s address at 64 Densmore Street in Muskegon, and CheckMyVote shows he was registered to vote at that address on January 3, 2024, but has not voted.
There’s also Leuam Vannavong, an illegal immigrant from Laos, who was arrested by ICE on July 31, 2025 in Grand Rapids. Vannavong was previously convicted of first degree criminal sexual conduct in Michigan, as well as burglary and a probation violation.
Online records and the Michigan Sex Offender Registry show Vannavong lived at 2968 Riley Ridge Road in Holland, though the house was sold in September.
Vannavong’s active voter registration is listed at the same address on CheckMyVote, with a registration date of March 3, 1997 and no voting history.
The actively registered illegal immigrant voters follow numerous confirmations noncitizens on Michigan’s QVF over the last year, including many that have cast illegal ballots.
In the first quarter of 2026 alone, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Folini, a Republican candidate for Secretary of State, flagged 198 non-US citizens who were pulled for jury duty from Michigan’s driver’s license database.
Eleven of those individuals were also registered voters at some point, including seven with “active” status in the state’s Qualified Voter File, though there’s no evidence any have cast illegal ballots, according to Forlini.
That’s on top of 640 self-reported noncitizens who were summoned for jury duty in 2025, which included 18 who were registered to vote. Of those 18, four were removed from the state’s voter database, including one with a voting record, one was placed in “challenged” status, three were referred for removal, and 10 previously had their registrations canceled, including two with a voting record.
“It is unconscionable that this problem continues,” Forlini said in a statement last week. “To bring greater transparency to this issue, our office will begin posting a running tally on our website so the public can remain informed, and legislators can better understand the scope of the problem and craft reform to prevent it from continuing.”
Forlini’s findings, which have been dismissed by Benson as a Republican plot to “dismantle people’s faith” in Michigan elections, follow many other examples of illegal voters confirmed by the Secretary of State herself.
Benson testified before Congress in September 2024 that “there is no evidence that noncitizens are voting,” but was forced to admit otherwise a month later when Chinese national Haoxiang Gao, a 19-year-old University of Michigan student, cast an illegal ballot that was counted in the 2024 election because there’s no means to retrieve it.
Then in April 2025, Benson admitted 15 others likely cast illegal votes during the 2024 General Election based on a cross reference between the QVF and the driver’s license database, bringing the total to at least 16.
In January, Benson confirmed yet another noncitizen cast multiple illegal votes during a review of Forlini’s findings.
When Benson took office, Michigan had approximately 7.5 million registered voters, which was about 300,000 fewer than the voting-age population of roughly 7.8 million. Over the next several years, the state added 700,000 registrations, many automatically through driver’s license renewals, bringing the total to 8.2 million registered voters for a voting-age population of about 7.9 million by 2022, the same year Democrats regained full control of state government for the first time in four decades.
If or when Benson will remove the remaining active noncitizen voter registrations is anyone’s guess.
The Secretary of State has repeatedly refused to answer questions regarding the removal of noncitizens from the QVF.
Despite the obvious problem, Benson could not provide data on the number of noncitizen voters she’s removed from the state’s voter rolls when confronted by The Detroit News reporter Beth LeBlanc in January.
It was the same deal in February, when The Midwesterner confronted Benson following Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s final State of the State address.
At the same time, Benson has campaigned against Republican efforts to require proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote on both the state and national level, while also pushing through a dozen election rule changes in February that make it easier to cheat and harder to challenge illegal votes.
More recently, the Secretary of State vowed to defy President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring citizenship verification for elections.
