Governor Mikie Sherrill just admitted that illegal aliens voted in New Jersey elections.
Now she is daring the DOJ to come get their names.
What New Jersey spent 20 million taxpayer dollars on to protect those same illegal alien voters is where this scandal gets outrageous.
Mikie Sherrill Admits Illegal Aliens Voted in New Jersey Elections
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill held a press conference July 21 confirming that roughly 6,600 illegal aliens were improperly registered to vote through a software error in the state Motor Vehicle Commission system between June 2023 and June 2024.
She blamed the vendor immediately.
IDEMIA, the longtime contractor, pushed back and said the state's Division of Elections bore responsibility for validating every registration that came through the system.
Sherrill acknowledged that fewer than 400 of those illegal aliens actually cast ballots.
She told the press there was "no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed" – a line polished enough to recite from memory.
The Department of Homeland Security had a different number entirely.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to New Jersey and three other states – California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada – and put the number of illegal alien registrations in New Jersey alone at 35,152.
That figure is more than five times what Sherrill's own Motor Vehicle Commission produced.
Sherrill's office said it had no idea how DHS arrived at that number and has never publicly addressed the gap between the two figures.
Harmeet Dhillon Demanded Voter Fraud Records and Got Stonewalled
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a formal letter to Sherrill demanding the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and registration dates of all 6,600 illegal aliens – plus details on when and where each one voted.
Sherrill refused, telling Dhillon the request had no legal basis and citing the federal Privacy Act and the Driver's Privacy Protection Act.
Dhillon responded publicly, warning that "DOJ will get this information through all legal means."
The DOJ had already been pursuing New Jersey's voter records before this scandal broke – filing suit against New Jersey and four other states in February for refusing to produce complete voter registration lists.
While blocking federal access, her own administration was already pointing those same illegal alien voters toward a resource she had not mentioned at her press conference.
That same official website – the one Sherrill promoted to walk the 6,600 illegal aliens off New Jersey's voter rolls – contains a link, buried several clicks deep, to the Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative.
New Jersey taxpayers fund the DDDI to keep illegal aliens out of deportation proceedings.
The same governor who called illegal alien voting unacceptable built a direct pipeline from her voter roll scandal page to a deportation defense fund – paid for by the same New Jersey taxpayers she claims to be protecting.
New Jersey Taxpayers Funded a 20 Million Dollar Deportation Defense Fund for Illegal Aliens
Sherrill had already doubled the DDDI's budget to more than $20 million in June 2026 – months before the voter roll story ever became public.
New Jersey Assembly Republicans pointed out that the state now operates with "one standard for taxpayers and another standard for lawbreakers."
They pointed out that the same state forcing 167 school districts to gut sports programs, pink-slip teachers, and hike property taxes on retired families had found $20 million to hand deportation lawyers defending the illegal aliens at the center of a voter fraud scandal the state's own software built.
Retired New Jersey residents who spent their careers paying into this system are watching their grandchildren's schools collapse while their governor cuts checks to immigration lawyers.
This is not a software glitch story.
Sherrill constructed the legal escape route, then pointed the subjects of a federal investigation straight through it while refusing to cooperate with the DOJ pursuing those same people.
The DOJ sued Orange County, California this year for refusing to hand over illegal alien voter removal records in defiance of federal election law.
New Jersey is next.
A governor embarrassed by a software glitch does not spend months building a $20 million deportation defense fund and then route a federal investigation's subjects directly into it – Sherrill is protecting a voter pool and the infrastructure she built proves it.
Harmeet Dhillon's paper trail now runs directly through Mikie Sherrill's office, and the DDDI link on Sherrill's own government website is the exhibit she cannot explain in federal court.
Sources:
- "New Jersey Rejects DOJ's Request for Records on Noncitizen Voter Registration Error," The Epoch Times, July 28, 2026.
- "Democrat Governor DEFIES DOJ Investigation Into Noncitizen Voting — DOJ Vows to Press On," Blaze Media, July 2026.
- Margot Cleveland, "NJ Dem Governor Pledges Transparency, Blocks Election Docs," The Federalist, July 24, 2026.
- Staff, "New Jersey Offers $20 Million Legal Defense Fund for Noncitizens Mistakenly Registered to Vote," NJ 101.5, July 30, 2026.
- Pamela Geller, "Democrat Governor Mikie Sherrill Spends Tens of Millions of Taxpayer Money Protecting Illegals From Deportation," Geller Report, June 5, 2026.
