Chelsea Cox came to America from Jamaica on a tourist visa in 1999. By 2000, the visa had expired. By 2012, she'd used a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate to get a Florida driver's license, registered to vote, and started casting ballots in federal elections — including the 2020 presidential race in Broward County.

A Biden-appointed federal judge just ruled that prosecuting her for it is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz, sitting in the Southern District of Florida, issued a 31-page opinion dismissing the federal case against Cox. His reasoning: the Constitution gives states, not Congress, the power to determine voter qualifications. Therefore, the provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that makes it a federal crime for noncitizens to vote is unconstitutional — at least as applied to Cox.

"The Constitution commits to the States, and the States alone, the general power to set voter qualifications in federal elections," Leibowitz wrote.

The timing is remarkable. The 2026 midterms are weeks away. The DOJ under President Trump has prosecuted at least 60 people for illegal voting since January 2025. Noncitizens from Mexico, Nicaragua, and Cuba were arrested in Louisiana alone for voting in the 2024 election. And now a federal judge nominated by Joe Biden — confirmed by the Senate 64-33 in 2024 — has handed down a ruling that says Congress can't make any of that a federal crime.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, co-author of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, didn't hold back. "This insane ruling will certainly be overturned," Lee said. "But it gives the game away: Democrats pretend we don't need the SAVE Act because non-citizen voting is already illegal… while activist judges try to destroy laws banning non-citizens from voting!"

He's got the pattern exactly right. Step one: insist noncitizen voting never happens. Step two: fight every attempt to verify citizenship at the ballot box. Step three: have a friendly judge rule that even if it does happen, punishing it is unconstitutional.

Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow with Advancing American Freedom, called the ruling "patently wrong" and predicted the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would squash it. Abhishek Kambil, a partner at Holtzman Vogel Law Firm, said he'd be "surprised" if the federal government didn't prevail on appeal.

Leibowitz himself acknowledged what his ruling doesn't do. "Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here?" he wrote. "This has already been decided elsewhere and is not addressed here: Florida can and does." So the judge knows what Cox did is illegal under state law. He just decided the federal government shouldn't be allowed to say so too.

The criminal charges against Cox were filed in October 2025. She entered the country on a tourist visa 27 years ago, overstayed, obtained fraudulent identity documents, and voted in multiple federal elections. Nobody disputes the facts. The only question, according to this judge, is whether Congress has standing to care.

This is the same judicial philosophy that treats the border as a suggestion and citizenship as a formality. The Constitution mentions the word "citizen" dozens of times. The Fourteenth Amendment defines it. Federal law has criminalized noncitizen voting for three decades. But one district judge in Miami looked at all of that and decided the real constitutional violation was telling a Jamaican national she couldn't pick the American president.