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BATON ROUGE – Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry said a federal data program that verifies citizenship status uncovered the 403 noncitizens registered to vote in Louisiana out of a total voting pool of 2.96 million, with 83 having voted in at least one election since the 1980s.
The state used the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program for the first time this year after President Donald Trump’s administration removed system fees.
“If you keep your voter rolls clean, that’s the foundation of election integrity,” Landry said in an interview. Landry’s findings have come as the U.S. Senate begins debate this week on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE America Act), a Republican bill that would require proof of citizenship such as a birth certificates, real IDs or passports when registering to vote and picture IDs such as a driver’s license when casting a ballot.
Trump has claimed that between 3 million and 5 million “illegal votes” caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that tens of thousands of non-citizen votes in swing states handed the White House to Joe Biden in 2020. He is pressuring the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act “to stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections,”
Voting rights advocates say his claims are greatly exaggerated and that the act could disenfranchise Americans who do not have passports or copies of their birth certificates or who have changed their names after getting married.
“We have a problem in this country already with voter participation, where about half our country doesn’t vote,” said Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voters Organized to Educate and Voice of the Experienced, two Louisiana nonprofits focused on promoting social justice and democracy. “So, you want to reduce that further in the face of a non-problem, an invented problem?”According to the secretary of state’s election statistics, only 36.3% of Louisiana voters participated in the state’s last gubernatorial election in 2023.
Landry said even a small number of ineligible voters could affect an election.
“Every ineligible voter that is on our roll – and every time they vote – it cancels out the vote of a valid voter, a person who is eligible to vote,” Landry said.
Landry said she was not surprised there are noncitizens registered to vote in Louisiana because voter registration is offered when a person fills out other state paperwork, such as in applying for a driver’s license.
“If they’re getting a document put in front of them … some of them may have just gone ahead and registered,” Landry said.
Concern about election integrity, especially non-citizen voting, has been an ongoing concern for Republican-led states and policymakers.
But recent examinations by other states of non-citizen registrations closely track Louisiana’s results. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said of the state’s 2.1 million registered voters, just one “confirmed non-citizen” was found, and that person had never voted.
An audit of voter rolls in Georgia in 2024 found 20 registered non-citizens out of 8.2 million registrations. In 2024, Idaho discovered 36 “very likely” registered non-citizens in a total pool of 1 million voters. Montana recently found 23 possible noncitizen registrants in a voting pool of about 785,000.
In 2024, Gov. Jeff Landry signed an executive order requiring all state agencies to include a written declaration on applications for public assistance and voter registration that only citizens are eligible to vote.
Rep. Gerald “Beau” Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, recently proposed a bill mandating the use of the federal citizenship verification program in Louisiana.
“We’ve had an increasing number of folks come across our southern border, and there’s been a crackdown on that,” Beaullieu said. “If we have more people who are in our country illegally, you would think that you would more than likely have an uptick in activity with people trying to illegally vote.”
The secretary of state had been hesitant to use the SAVE program in the past due to high costs – $1.50 for every name examined – but in his second term, Trump removed the transaction fee.
If the SAVE America Act passes, states would be required to detect noncitizen voters by using either the federal program or other databases that cross-check Social Security numbers. Records from state agencies that administer identification cards and drivers’ licenses could also be checked.
After the U.S. Senate failed to pass the act in 2025, Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, promised to bring the bill to another vote. Thune recently said there does not appear to be enough votes to break the filibuster in the Senate, a procedure that would require 60 of the body’s 100 votes.
The Brennan Center, a nonprofit law and public policy institute, says 21 million U.S. citizens of voting age do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship, and only about half of American adults have a passport.
That group includes newly married women whose birth certificates may not align with their new names and prevent them from voting. The center said two-thirds of Black Americans and many young voters lack a valid U.S. passport or access to necessary documents.
Louisiana voters can check and update their registrations at GeauxVote.com or via the GeauxVote mobile app. The deadline for voters to update their registration is 30 days before an election, if mailed to the secretary of state’s office, or 20 days before an election if done online.
Educational videos regarding closed-party primaries are also available on the secretary of state website.

A Louisiana lawmaker has advanced a bill that would shield oil and gas companies from lawsuits seeking compensation for the effects of climate change, but critics fear its passage would limit communities’ ability to protect the public health and property rights. 
House Bill 804, authored by Rep. Brett Geymann (R-Lake Charles), was referred to the Committee on Appropriations on March 9. The measure would limit claims against the energy industry for injury or harm to individuals or property caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.
The Louisiana measure comes in the wake of a federal lawmaker, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming), saying she is working on a federal bill to regulate climate-change lawsuits and bills relating to the climate superfund.
“Multiple climate lawsuits are now advancing toward trial,” Hageman said at a congressional hearing last month. “Clearly this is an area in which Congress has a role to play. To that end, I am working with my colleagues in both the House and Senate to craft legislation tackling both these state laws and the lawsuits.”
The Louisiana bill would bar parishes from seeking damages related to climate change unless they obtain the agreement of the governor, attorney general, House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment, and Senate Committee on Natural Resources.
Jackson Voss, senior government affairs & policy advisor for the Alliance for Affordable Energy in New Orleans, expressed concern that Geymann, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment, and other lawmakers may not have considered the full consequences of HB 804 becoming law.
“While the chairman’s intention may be to protect industry from what he sees as unnecessary litigation, we are concerned that this type of bill would essentially deny people, businesses, and state and local governments the ability to seek legal recourse for anything that could be framed as being the result of emissions,” Voss told the Louisiana Record in an email.
Based on Voss’s reading of the measure, parishes would be barred from seeking damages if harmful emissions leaked from a carbon-capture project, unless the causes of the action were included in provisions of the federal Clean Air Act and the parishes obtained approval from the governor, attorney general and the designated legislative leaders.
“All this to say, the alliance is concerned that this bill will do more to limit the rights of the people and the state of Louisiana to vigorously protect their interests, as well as public health and property, than to protect industry and natural resources,” he said. “We hope to ensure legislators are made aware of those concerns before they vote to make this law.”
Another Louisiana bill would go a step further. HB 566, sponsored by Rep. Charles Owen (R-Rosepine), would bar the state from spending money on any program whose goal is net-zero carbon emissions – that is, reducing greenhouse gas generation to zero.
The measure would also empower citizens or groups who know about potential violations of the bill to file civil lawsuits against the public entity engaged in such spending, according to the Legislature’s analysis of the bill.
At the start of 2026, the American Petroleum Institute identified stopping “extreme climate liability policy” as one of its agenda items for this year to strengthen the nation’s energy industry.

BATON ROUGE–Concerns about rising mental health issues have led the Louisiana Department of Health to seek to reallocate $6.5 million to expand its crisis response system.
The department wants to use the extra money to help fund a new statewide hub that supports the Louisiana Crisis Response System.
Health officials discussed the request during a House Appropriations Committee meeting this week.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 838,000 adults in Louisiana had a mental health condition as of March 2025. That is three times the size of Baton Rouge’s population. Around 74,000 Louisiana teens experience a major depressive episode, and 49,000 teens in the state have serious thoughts of suicide.
But more than 3 million people in Louisiana live in communities without enough mental health professionals.
“And today, it’s quite spotty,” said Louisiana Department of Health Secretary Bruce D. Greenstein. “There are gaps in between modalities of care, and this is the beginning of using crisis to help be the overarching modality of care, so there are no open spots,” he said, referring to the hub.
Dr. Holly Howat, who is the interim assistant secretary for the Office of Behavioral Health, said there are “still, unfortunately, some regions of our state that do not have mobile crisis units either for children or adults.”
The Health Department ensured that the 988 Helpline connects with the new statewide crisis hub. Officials said the hub will allow for greater coverage of all aspects of the crisis response system across the state.
“We want to make sure it’s robust and it’s effective,” said Howat.
Howat added that one of the benefits of the crisis hub will be to reduce emergency department utilization and give people access to the right care at the right time.
Some of the lawmakers expressed concern about the effectiveness of the 988 Helpline.
Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, addressed the unlikelihood of students in need of emotional assistance calling the number.
“I think we’re going to have to be very innovative in how we reach and provide access for those individuals to feel comfortable,” said McFarland.
There are also concerns with students’ awareness of the resources and the extent to which sources will go to help them.
Rep. Delisha Boyd, D-New Orleans, filed a bill that proposes to extend to middle schools the requirements that high schools already have to display suicide prevention information on school websites and ID cards.
Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, expressed her support for the bill, adding that the law should be extended through all levels of education, starting with kindergarten.
“We think that is a really good idea about the more times people see something, they will know to be able to use that,” Howat agreed.
She added that schools should address how 988 is not just a last-resort tool but a line of support that can cover all sides of crisis, from having a bad day to serious life-threatening thoughts.
Greenstein said he is willing to give the “highest commitment” possible to work with the Louisiana Board of Regents, university boards and the Legislature to ensure that proper awareness of suicide prevention resources is available on college campuses across the state.
“We desperately want to provide as much help as possible,” Greenstein said.
Howat added that the department’s goal is to have all aspects of the crisis response system in place by the end of the year, though officials are still struggling with crafting the most effective resource.
If you or a loved one is struggling with mental health or looking for a source to talk to, call or text 988 to get in contact with accessible care. Visit Louisiana988.org for more information on ways to chat.

(Editor’s note: The charges listed here and the narratives that go with them are provided by the police agencies that made the arrests. Guilt or innocence has not been determined in court.)
Sheriff’s Office detectives on Tuesday arrested a Morgan City man accused of sex crimes involving a juvenile.

St. Mary

Sheriff Gary Driskell reported these arrests:

--Leon Sylvester, 41, Morgan City, was arrested at 1:36 p.m. Tuesday on a warrant alleging trafficking of children for sexual purposes, indecent behavior with juveniles, computer-aided solicitation, oral sexual battery and carnal knowledge of a juvenile.

On Feb. 1, a patrol deputy was dispatched to the Berwick Police Department in reference to a complaint against a man who was allegedly involved in sexual contact with a juvenile and was threatening to release video if the juvenile refused to continue.

Detectives with the Criminal Investigations Division opened an investigation into the incident involving Sylvester. Detectives obtained and executed a search warrant for Sylvester’s residence.

The evidence gathered through the investigation led detectives to secure a warrant for the arrest of Sylvester. Contact was made with Sylvester on Tuesday, and he was transported to the St. Mary Parish Law Enforcement Center for booking. Bail was set at $1,100,000.

Driskell and the detectives would like to thank the Berwick Police Department for their assistance in this investigation.

--Isaac Edwards III, 44, Centerville, was arrested by the Narcotics Section at 10:09 p.m. Tuesday on charges of possession of MDMA, possession of marijuana and improper lane usage. Bail was set at $5,250.

--Olivia Rene Prado, 32, Morgan City, was arrested at 2:22 p.m. Mondy on two warrants alleging failure to appear on charges of theft and possession of methamphetamine. Bail has not been set at this time.

Morgan City

Chief Chad M. Adams reported these arrests:

--Thomas Castille, 36, Terrebonne Street, Morgan City, was arrested at 11:52 a.m. Tuesday on a charge of domestic abuse battery.

--Seth Fryou, 33, Maplewood Street, Houma, was arrested at 3:05 p.m. Tuesday on two counts of failure to appear for arraignment (6th Ward Morgan City Court).

--Richard Ruelas, 34, La. 182, Patterson, was arrested at 3:05 p.m. Tuesday on three counts of failure to appear for arraignment (6th Ward Morgan City Court).

--Christopher Coleman, 41, Grant Road, Napoleonville, was arrested at 10:06 p.m. Tuesday on charges of remaining where forbidden, resisting an officer and disturbing the peace (intoxicated).

--Dennis Richard, 30, Chennault Street, Morgan City, was arrested 2:39 a.m. Wednesday on charges of driving while intoxicated, reckless operation of a vehicle and open container.

--Keith Lemaire, 63, Dale Street, Morgan City, was arrested at 1:03 p.m. Monday on a charge of possession of marijuana.

--Dakota Daigle, 33, Second Street, Morgan City, was arrested at 3:05 p.m. Monday on a charge of battery of a dating partner.

--Corey Tarver, 48, Main Street, Patterson, was arrested at 10:50 p.m. Monday on charges of failure to appear to pay fine, possession of marijuana and headlights required.

Patterson

Chief Garrett Grogan reported these arrests:

--Derrick L. Turner, 48, Martin Luther King Avenue, Patterson, was arrested at 9:14 a.m. Tuesday on charges of driver’s license suspended or revoked and stop sign violation. Turner was released on a summons.

--Abram H. Hartley, 38, Broussard Street, Patterson, was arrested at 7:33 p.m. Tuesday on a warrant alleging failure to appear on a charge of stop sign violation. Hartley was incarcerated at the Patterson PD Jail with bond set at $585.

Assumption

Sheriff Leland Falcon reported this arrest:

--Anthony John Pennison Jr, 54, Murial Street, Bayou L’Ourse, was arrested Monday on a charge of simple criminal damage to property.

The charge arises from the execution of the arrest warrant related to an incident March 11 in Bayou L’Ourse.

Deputies responded to a reported disturbance in the 100 block of Moffet Court. Deputies made contact with the complainant, who advised that there was a dispute involving someone whom had used an off-road vehicle without authorization from the owner. In doing so, the individual now identified as Pennison damaged the off-road vehicle.

At the conclusion of the investigation, deputies obtained arrest warrants for Pennison.

Deputies arrested Pennison in Bayou L’Ourse on Monday afternoon.

Pennison was booked into the Assumption Parish Detention Center and remains incarcerated with bond set at $50,000.

Chitimacha

Chief B.C. Trahan reported these arrests:

--Scott Broussard, 56, Brookhaven Drive, Youngsville, was arrested Saturday on a charge of domestic abuse battery. He was transported to St Mary Parish Law Enforcement Center.

--Glenn Toups, 70, South Louisiana Street, Abbeville, was arrested Saturday on charges of illuminating devices required and operating a vehicle while intoxicated. He was transported to St Mary Parish Law Enforcement Center.

--Sonja Ellis, 51, Service Road, Sunset, was arrested Tuesday on a charge of misdemeanor theft. She was released on a summons.