Fact-checking Trump's claim that 'thousands' of immigrants illegally voted in New Jersey

President Donald Trump said 'thousands' of immigrants in the U.S. illegally cast ballots in New Jersey — which goes beyond what federal and state officials have confirmed so far. 'They caught thousands of votes in New Jersey where illegal aliens were allowed to vote,' Trump said in a July 22 speech in Georgia. 'Thousands and thousands of votes.' Trump's statement came as he criticized Democrats for voting against legislation that included an element of the SAVE America Act voting legislation. New Jersey officials said they will continue to investigate how many noncitizens were registered to vote and cast ballots. More details are likely to emerge, but Trump's statement conflicts with available information. We asked the Trump administration to share information that supports Trump's statement. We did not receive evidence that backs up what he said. Trump administration alleged 35,000 noncitizens on New Jersey voter rolls In documents released alongside Trump's July 16 primetime elections address, the Department of Homeland Security said 'over 250,000 non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in just the four states,' citing California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, which are all led by Democratic governors. The news release said 35,152 noncitizens registered to vote in New Jersey. But it did not say how many of those people voted, and in letters to states, the department said — more cautiously than Trump — that there 'may be' that many noncitizens on the rolls. On July 21, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she had learned the previous week about a software error in the state's motor vehicle system that led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people between June 2023 and June 2024 who had indicated that they were not U.S. citizens. At the time, Democrat Phil Murphy was governor. Sherrill said the error was discovered and corrected in June 2024, but state officials did not make it public at that time. Sherrill said election officials are removing anyone who is improperly registered. 'These individuals answered 'no' when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers' licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,' Sherrill wrote in a statement. Sherrill said a preliminary analysis showed that 'fewer than 400 individuals' cast ballots. In a press conference, Sherrill said that the majority were voters unaffiliated with a party. If each of those 400 noncitizen votes had been cast by someone in the U.S. illegally that number does not come close to the 'thousands and thousands' that Trump said. (In 2021, New Jersey expanded eligibility for driver's licenses regardless of immigration status.) Darwin Pham, a Sherrill spokesperson, said of the 400 voters, 'We do not know their citizenship status, only the responses they submitted during the software error.' Officials at the Motor Vehicle Commission and state elections office did not respond to our questions. New Jersey is one of dozens of states that have refused to comply with the Justice Department's demands to turn over all voter roll information, citing privacy concerns. The department's lawsuit against the state is pending. Sherrill said that the state will replace the software vendor, IDEMIA. The company said the state, not the software, was to blame. Putting 400 noncitizen votes in context The Department of Homeland Security's figure — 35,152 noncitizens registered to vote — would account for 0.6% of all registered voters in New Jersey. When PolitiFact asked Homeland Security about its methodology, a spokesperson pointed us to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's statements that did not answer the question. The state's figure of 6,600 registered noncitizen voters would be 0.1% of New Jersey's registered voters. Could this have affected New Jersey elections? It's not clear in which elections the 400 noncitizens cast ballots. Sherrill said those votes could have been cast in any election since 2023, and New Jersey votes for some offices every year. In the 2024 election, which attracted the most voters during that period, New Jersey counted 4,321,921 votes for president, with a final margin between the candidates of 252,498 votes. If all 400 votes had been cast in that election, they would have accounted for less than 0.2% of the margin between the two candidates. New Jersey has 12 U.S. House districts. If those noncitizen votes had been spread evenly among the 12 districts, they would have accounted for about 33 votes per district. But the closest U.S. House margin that year in New Jersey was 12,575 votes. So 33 votes would have accounted for 0.3% of that margin between the candidates. State legislative races have smaller margins than U.S. House races; the state Assembly has 80 members and the state Senate has 40 members. So the average number of noncitizen votes by state Assembly or state Senate district would have been either five or 10. PolitiFact ruling Trump said, 'They caught thousands of votes in New Jersey where illegal aliens were allowed to vote,' adding 'thousands and thousands' for emphasis. The Department of Homeland Security has said there 'may be' as many as 35,152 noncitizens on New Jersey's voter rolls. It didn't say how many were in the country illegally or how many voted. New Jersey officials said they have found 6,600 noncitizens registered through a software glitch, of which 400 voted. But the state didn't say how many were in the country illegally, as opposed to being residents legally in the country but still ineligible to vote. More information is likely to come out, but the burden of proof is on the speaker making the statement. At this stage, neither federal nor state data backs up Trump's assertion, either on the number who voted or their legal status. PolitiFact rates politicians' statements based on available evidence at the time they speak. This one includes an element of truth but ignores facts that would give a different impression, so we rate this statement Mostly False. PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.