# New Jersey MVC Noncitizen Registration Error On **July 21, 2026**, New Jersey Governor [[Mikie Sherrill]] announced that the state Motor Vehicle Commission had registered about **6,600 noncitizens** to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. They had applied for or renewed driver's licenses and state IDs and answered **"no"** when asked whether they were US citizens. The system registered them anyway. A state review found that **fewer than 400** of them voted. Sherrill blamed a "serious software error" at the MVC's vendor, IDEMIA, which the state is replacing. She said the people affected were registered "through no fault of their own," and ordered them removed from the rolls. IDEMIA said its job was to transmit data and that the Division of Elections verifies eligibility. The White House said the episode "underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act" (see [[SAVE Act]]). ## What ICE did the next day ICE records released in October 2026 ([[ICE Voter Records Collection]]) include an internal email thread dated **July 22, 2026**, the day after Sherrill's announcement, titled "400 NJ voters." - ICE's deputy principal legal advisor for enforcement summarized the news coverage: "it appears 6,000+ aliens were registered to vote through 'no fault of their own.' It appears from the articles that the registration was 'automatic.' That said, the articles indicate that 400 such aliens actually voted." - His conclusion: "They would be inadmissible under INA § 212(a)(10)(D)(i) and deportable under INA § 237(a)(6)(A)." He quoted the agency's standard guidance: "There is no requirement that the alien have knowledge that he or she has illegally voted, and no conviction is required." - ICE Deputy Director [[Charles Wall]] replied on the thread: "HSI is heavily working these cases." - A DHS official with responsibility for REAL ID replied that their office had no "purview on legal status, just on REAL ID standards/oversight." ## Why it matters This is the clearest case in the ICE files of the program's legal theory reaching people who did nothing false. These residents told the state they were not citizens. The state registered them by mistake. Some then voted, and some may well have assumed that a government registration meant they were eligible. Under the statute ICE's lawyers cited, none of that matters: a vote cast in violation of law is grounds for removal regardless of knowledge, and the narrow exception covers only people who believed they were citizens and meet other conditions. So a state vendor's software error became, within a day, a deportation caseload for [[Homeland Security Investigations]] and a talking point for the SAVE America Act. The people who caused the error face no comparable consequence. The people it happened to do. ## See also - [[ICE Voter Records Collection]] · [[Homeland Security Investigations]] · [[ICE]] - [[Mikie Sherrill]] · [[Charles Wall]] - [[SAVE Act]] · [[Proof of Citizenship Requirement]]