We’ve heard a lot about voter fraud over the past few years, particularly after the 2020 election.

There are still people who falsely believe Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump. Most of us, even those of us who voted for him in 2020, don’t feel that way, but it’s wooder under the bridge, as Philadelphians would say.

However, the perception our system is infected with voter fraud persists, with many blaming immigrants for a supposed vast conspiracy of fraud.

I know a man who got his green card in the regular, unexceptional, lawful way millions before him have legalized: marrying a U.S. citizen.

There was no asylum claim, no crossing the border surreptitiously behind a coyote, no misrepresentation, no omission of facts on his application, nothing.

A straightforward case of, I meet you, I fall in love with you, we get married, we fill out forms, we sit down for an interview, and the government sends me my card.

This particular Italian paid his taxes, ran a business that employed U.S. citizens, was a valued member of his community, never even got a speeding ticket. A man of good character, “un uomo di grande qualita’” as the Italians would say.

It was precisely because he was a man of good character that he is now detained in a prison somewhere in northern New Jersey.

Back in 2024, he was registered to vote in the upcoming elections by someone who assured him he was eligible. When he got his voter registration card, he assumed the government knew what it was doing, and he went to the polls on election day.

The woman at the polling site asked for his ID, and he gave her his green card. The green card clearly showed he was not a U.S. citizen. The poll worker looked at it, asked someone else if this was sufficient ID to vote. She was assured that it was, and she directed the Italian to a voting booth.

And he voted. Not for Kamala. You do the math.

Fast forward two years. The Italian comes back from a visit to his beloved native country, after multiple previous and uneventful trips, and is detained by officers at Newark International Airport.

They ask him, “Did you vote?” He answered, truthfully, “Yes.”

They then held him for 30 more hours, without allowing him to speak to a lawyer. During this time, he was also unable to speak with family, including his elderly mother in Italy who was desperate for information.

Finally, they sent him to an immigration prison as Public Enemy No. 1, without even considering the possibility of letting him go on his own recognizance.

However, they thought he would be comforted by the fact that where he was going, there weren’t any gang members.

Suffice it to say, he wasn’t comforted. And there he sits.

The law against noncitizens voting is so draconian it does not even make an exception for cases where a person reasonably believed they were entitled to vote because — take a deep breath — a public official told them it was okay. It is what lawyers call a “strict liability” offense.

You only needed to have “intended” to vote. You didn’t need to “intend to vote fraudulently.”

That is where we come in. My office has filed a habeas petition on the grounds this gentleman is being held without regard to his due process rights. He was not given an opportunity to prove he poses no public danger and isn’t a flight risk.

He has a business, a family, and has lived in the U.S. since 2020. He has made multiple prior trips home with no problem. Not the kind of guy whose picture ends up on a post office wall.

The point of this column is to expose how ridiculous this idea of “immigrant voter fraud” is. The number of immigrants who have voted unlawfully is a tiny percentage of the immigrant population, let alone the voting population.

Most have found themselves caught up in well-meaning attempts to make voting easier for everyone, including the dreaded motor-voter laws, which allow you to register to vote on the same day that you get a license.

I’m still trying to figure out how driving and voting have anything in common, except for the fact that they can both have catastrophic results.

I am sure there will be people reading this column who will write me off as a crazy liberal, and those would be the people who have never read my columns on abortion, same sex marriage, antisemitism, and a host of other topics that expose my radicalism.

But I really don’t care. There is a man of good character who has been caught up in a system that ignores human error, that being the error of a certain American poll worker, and exacts an incredibly harsh penalty from someone who simply wanted to do hiscivic duty.

And didn’t vote for Kamala. If you think that’s fair, you don’t understand anything about this country.