Pro-Trump Mayor Accused of Illegally Voting as a Noncitizen: ‘Did I Do Something Wrong?’

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

A Kansas mayor who has supported President Donald Trump for years is now facing years behind bars after state prosecutors said he voted as an illegal immigrant.

The New York Times ran a feature on Joe Ceballos this week, who is currently facing multiple charges of voter fraud just months after being re-elected mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, which has a population of 687. The 55-year-old Ceballos is now battling three counts of election perjury and three counts of voting without being qualified.

“Nobody ever told me that I couldn’t vote or register to vote,” Ceballos told The Times. “And so, as a young man, yeah, I did it. I registered.”

Ceballos was born in Mexico and moved to the U.S. at the age of four, according to The Times; the report does not say whether his family moved legally or illegally at the time, but Ceballos later received a green card in 1990. Ceballos said he believed his status as a permanent resident allowed him to vote in elections.

“His defense, essentially, is that he did not understand that being a permanent resident should have precluded him from voting and holding office, and that no one ever told him he was not eligible,” the paper wrote.

Ceballos said his legal issues started last year when he was attempting to become a citizen and admitted to a federal official that he had voted.

“His eyes got real big, and I was like, ‘Boy, did I do something wrong?’” Ceballos recalled.

That’s what “derailed” his citizenship application and “alerted Kansas officials that he had voted as a noncitizen and set off the chain of events that led to his being charged,” the paper said.

Now, Ceballos is facing up to 68 months in prison and a $200,000 fine.

“This alien committed a felony by voting in American elections,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said about Ceballos.

Ceballos said he voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 and that he still supported much of the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration — but that he wasn’t thrilled he was now being targeted, obviously.

“I still strongly believe in Trump’s immigration laws about, ‘Let’s get the bad guys out of here.’ You know, they’re murderers, they killed people, they molested people, let’s get them out of here,” Ceballos said. “But I feel like I don’t fit that category. And I feel like that’s how they’re treating me.”

The Times reported that many Coldwater residents feel the prosecution against Ceballos is a “personal attack on a pillar of the town.” Ceballos won his re-election bid last year, 101 votes to 20.

The NYT report comes as Trump has backed the SAVE Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Some Democrats, like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have said it is a racist piece of legislation, but CNN data guru Harry Enten reported the vast majority of Americans support voter ID laws.

Enten said during a recent segment that polling going back to 2018 showed at least 75% of Americans back voter ID. That includes data from last year, which showed a whopping 83% of citizens were in favor of it.

“Normally, you might expect hey, there’d be a big divide by party, with Republicans really for it and Democrats really against it,” Enten said. “But not really here.”

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