The unique situation of American Samoans has caused confusion across several U.S. states, including Oregon, where officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they obtained driver’s licenses under the state’s motor-voter law.
Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State’s office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed.
“We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,” said Tupe Smith, an American Samoan charged in a similar case in Alaska. “It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.”
The situation in Oregon reflects broader national confusion stemming from the legal classification of American Samoans as U.S. nationals rather than U.S. citizens — the only U.S. territory whose people are not granted birthright citizenship.
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A sign supporting citizenship for American Samoans is posted outside the Log Cabin Gifts store on the waterfront in Whittier, Alaska, May 13, 2025.
Mark Thiessen / AP
American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections.
The legal and cultural questions around this status also resonate within Oregon’s American Samoan community.
Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland-based nonprofit, explained why many in the territory have grown wary of birthright citizenship.
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“We’ve been able to maintain our culture, and we haven’t been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,” Bennett said, referring to the potential threat to communal land ownership laws if citizenship were imposed.
Trump administration challenges Oregon over voter rolls in lawsuit
Although supporters of automatic citizenship say it would benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 American Samoan nationals living in states such as California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska, others worry about unintended consequences. The debate reflects a broader tension between equal rights and cultural preservation.
In Alaska, confusion leads to criminal charges
The legal ambiguity continues to surface in unexpected places, like Whittier, Alaska, a cruise-ship stop squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Prince William Sound. It’s so small that nearly all of its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building — yet it became the unlikely setting of an unprecedented noncitizen voter fraud case.
The 14-story Begich Tower is seen in Whittier, Alaska, May 13, 2025. A majority of the town’s residents live in the condo.
Mark Thiessen / AP
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Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants, all born in American Samoa, say they believed they were eligible.
“To me, I’m an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,” said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. “American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that’s my birthright.”
The case began in 2023 when Pese’s wife, Tupe Smith, ran unopposed for a local school board seat. After winning with about 95% of the vote, she was arrested and charged.
Oregon elections officials refer cases of possible noncitizen voting to state DOJ
She explained to officers that she knew she wasn’t allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say.
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“When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying,” Smith told The Associated Press. ”He told their dad that he don’t want the cops to take me or to lock me up.”
Later, Pese and eight relatives — along with one man from their village in American Samoa — were also charged. Advocates say they were targeted despite a lack of criminal intent.
“There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked ‘U.S. citizen’ on voter registration materials,” Neil Weare, one of Smith’s attorneys and co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals last week, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges.
Michael Pese and his wife, Tupe Smith, pose for a photo with their son Maximus and daughter Cataleya in Whittier, Alaska, May 13, 2025.
Mark Thiessen / AP
Critics argue the prosecutions are politically motivated amid false claims from President Donald Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare.
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In Hawaii, American Samoans have faced similar confusion.
Sai Timoteo, who was born in American Samoa, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn’t allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: “U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.”
“I checked that box my entire life,” she said.
She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear.
A simple truth is at the root of many false election claims: Voter rolls are imperfect
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In Alaska, the confusion reached such a level that the Pacific Community of Alaska reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections.
Neither time did it receive a direct answer, said Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa with the organization.
“It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,” Toleafoa said. “I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.”
Legacy of colonialism and exclusion
The root of the issue stretches back to the colonial legacy of American Samoa.
In the 19th century, the U.S. secured part of the Samoan archipelago as a naval refueling station. Over time, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands gained birthright citizenship — but American Samoa did not.
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FILE – A sailing ship is seen in the harbor at Pago Pago, American Samoa, in July 2002.
David Briscoe / AP
Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History.
In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don’t want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision.
Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections.
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Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska, and Johnson from Seattle. Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report.
The University of Oregon’s Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to approve a $1.55 billion operating budget for the next fiscal year.
But they asked university leadership to return with an amended proposal by Dec. 15, when more details about future budget cuts will be known.
FILE — The Board of Trustees recently approved next year’s budget for the University of Oregon. The vote comes several weeks after the school’s president announced that he wants the university to reduce its annual budget as revenues and out-of-state enrollment decline.
Brian Bull / KLCC
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The vote comes several weeks after University of Oregon President Karl Scholz announced that he wants the school to reduce its annual budget by around $65 million.
At a trustees meeting Monday, Scholz said the estimated budget shortfall for next year is just around $23 million. But he said out-of-state enrollment is below historical norms for the second year in a row, and it’s unlikely to bounce back.
“One year can be an aberration. Two years is a pattern,” said Scholz. “And I believe we have to treat it as a new reality.”
Scholz said in May that discussions about the budget would happen over a six-month period. He said no final decisions about cuts would be made over this summer.
On Monday, UO Senate President Dyana Mason told trustees that the Senate had approved a new process to allow for community feedback in the cost-cutting process.
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Mason said the provost will work with the deans on budget proposals, finding “clear rationale” for why programs are considered for elimination.
The provost would then bring those proposals to the Senate Committee for Academic Modifications—which includes staff, faculty and students—for feedback.
Once the plans are nearly finalized, the Senate could then hold a period for public comment.
Mason told trustees that a six-month timeline is better than the three months that frustrated some staff last year, but she recommended taking however much time is necessary.
“The worst situation would be rushing forward to make decisions without appropriate evidence, data, feedback from the people that are most in the know about the impact on our students,” said Mason.
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UO’s Board of Trustees Chair Steve Holwerda said that every week that university delays the decisions could cost them millions of dollars.
Nathan Wilk is a reporter with the KLCC newsroom.This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
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Oregon’s juvenile justice system has been reshaped in recent years by a sweeping reform law that changed how the state handles minors accused of serious crimes.
Senate Bill 1008, which took effect in 2020, ended automatic transfers of juveniles into adult court and eliminated life without parole sentences for juveniles. The law also created “second-look” hearings and established parole eligibility after 15 years for certain offenders who committed crimes before turning 18.
To help explain the law and its impact, KVAL’s Frannie Pedersen put together a timeline video tracing the history of Senate Bill 1008, from the passage of Measure 11 in 1994 to the reforms that later reshaped Oregon’s juvenile justice system.
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The video breaks down how the law changed, why lawmakers pushed for reform, and how SB 1008 continues to influence Oregon’s justice system today. Viewers can watch the full video for a detailed timeline and explanation of the changes.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A New Jersey man was sentenced to federal prison last Friday for conspiring to distribute fentanyl, announced U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford for the District of Oregon.
Mark T. Eager, 34, was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison and five years of supervised release.
“This defendant showed a blatant disregard for human life by trafficking fentanyl across the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Bradford. “My office will continue to pursue those who profit from poisoning our communities, and we will use every available resource and partnership to combat fentanyl trafficking and keep Oregonians safe.”
“This investigation brought together law enforcement agencies from across the nation,” said Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Seattle acting Special Agent in Charge April Miller. “Homeland Security Investigations special agents from Portland, Newark, and Houston contributed to the case, along with the Portland Police Bureau and HIDTA HIT officers, who were instrumental in identifying Eager. His 11-year sentence sends a clear message: no matter where you are in the country or the world, if you attempt to sell narcotics online to Americans, we will find you.”
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“Fentanyl trafficking poses a grave threat to communities across the United States, and Homeland Security Investigations is committed to working with our partners to disrupt and dismantle the criminal networks responsible,” said HSI Houston Special Agent in Charge Lucia Cabral-DeArmas. “This case demonstrates the power of interagency collaboration under the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, leveraging resources from across the country to hold traffickers accountable and protect the American people. We will continue to pursue those who endanger lives through the distribution of dangerous synthetic opioids, and we remain steadfast in our mission to safeguard our communities from the violence and instability caused by transnational criminal organizations.”
“By following this offender’s digital trail, Homeland Security Investigations and our law enforcement partners nationwide executed federal search warrants, dismantled an active dark web fentanyl packaging operation and recovered deadly amounts of fentanyl, thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, and a trove of electronic devices and packaging materials,” said HSI Newark Acting Special Agent in Charge Spiros Karabinas. “This case is a powerful example of how coordinated, data-driven investigations can disrupt dangerous networks and help protect our communities from lethal synthetic opioids.”
According to court documents, from November 2023 through June 2024, Eager and his co-conspirator sold fentanyl on the Dark Net and Telegram. Eager operated as the vendor WRSEH10 and marketed the fentanyl as “China White Synthetic Heroin.”
In June 2024, HSI agents executed search warrants on two residences associated with Eager in Kearny, New Jersey, and seized over 360 grams of powdered fentanyl, counterfeit M30 pills, drug ledgers, cellular phones, two computers, and drug packaging consistent with three deliveries that were sent to Oregon.
On September 4, 2024, a federal grand jury in Portland returned a four-count indictment charging Eager with conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute fentanyl and distribution of fentanyl.
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On February 4, 2026, Eager pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute fentanyl.
HSI Portland and HSI Houston investigated this case with assistance from HSI Newark, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Interdiction Task Force (HIT). Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin prosecuted the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey assisted the U.S. Attorney’s in Oregon in obtaining the search warrants that were executed in Kearny.
