When the Democratic governor of New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, disclosed that the state had improperly registered as many as 6,600 noncitizens to vote, she vowed to do what she could to shield those affected from the fallout.
But for immigrants snagged by what Ms. Sherrill has called a software error, the breach could undercut future hopes for a green card or citizenship, according to lawyers familiar with the complexities of U.S. immigration law.
The roughly 400 noncitizens who Ms. Sherrill has said cast ballots after the state registered them to vote are almost certainly at serious risk of both criminal prosecution and removal from the country, if they were not citizens by the time they voted.
But even those who never voted could be forced to leave the United States.
“They’re in huge trouble,” said Margaret Stock, a lawyer based in Alaska who is considered an authority on U.S. immigration law.
A 1996 immigration bill, adopted during Bill Clinton’s presidency, governs the federal response when noncitizens seek a green card after their names have appeared on voter rolls. The legislation grew out of a push to cap legal immigration and to curb illegal border crossings in the wake of an economic recession in the early 1990s. Under the law, even if a noncitizen was unknowingly registered and never voted, Ms. Stock said, the person may be deemed “permanently inadmissible” to the United States, with a few narrow exceptions.
“It’s a harsh law,” she said.
A policy alert issued last year by the Trump administration stressed that improperly registered noncitizens have “the burden to prove” that they did nothing wrong.
The mix-up in New Jersey took place at motor vehicle agencies throughout the state between June 12, 2023, and June 25, 2024, during the administration of Ms. Sherrill’s predecessor, Philip D. Murphy. After a software update, those seeking licenses were shown a series of screens, in English, on an electronic pin pad.
The first screen described who was eligible to vote and required a person to click, “I understand,” according to a flow chart provided by the Motor Vehicle Commission.
The second stated, “If you are eligible to vote, we will update your voter registration or register you to vote unless you decline (SELECT ONE).” Customers were asked to touch either “continue voter registration” or “decline.”
The third screen asked: “Are you a Citizen of the United States of America?”
All of the people currently in limbo replied “No,” Ms. Sherrill said. That ended the transaction, but their names were nonetheless sent to the Division of Elections to be added to the voter rolls.
In June 2024, the software was adjusted so that the names of the people who acknowledged being noncitizens were no longer sent to elections officials. But the Murphy administration did not divulge the system flaw or remove the noncitizens from the rolls, Ms. Sherrill said. Mr. Murphy, through a spokesman, has said he had no knowledge of the error.
New Jersey has hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation. A representative for Idemia, the company that supplied the software that New Jersey was using at the time, has said that motor vehicle officials participated in the design process and had the responsibility to test the software and sign off on its effectiveness, before implementation.
Idemia has also said that the Division of Elections was responsible for verifying whether the people whose names were transmitted were eligible to vote. It has enlisted a crisis communications firm and a former U.S. attorney, Paul J. Fishman, to help manage the fallout from Ms. Sherrill’s disclosure.
The Division of Elections has declined to comment on Idemia’s claims, citing the independent investigation. The Motor Vehicle Commission also declined to comment.
State officials have noted that the pin-pads at motor vehicle offices will soon be accessible in five languages and that the citizenship question will appear first, immediately halting the transaction if a customer replies, “No.”
The autopsies of what precisely went wrong are likely to be of little consolation to the immigrants whose prospects of a future in the United States have been thrown into doubt.
At least one New Jersey man’s immigration process has already been upended by the error. The details of his story were shared by his lawyer, who asked not to be named to avoid drawing attention to himself and his vulnerable clients — including the New Jersey man, who emigrated from India and worked as a technology consultant.
State officials familiar with the man’s situation confirmed key elements of his predicament, and The New York Times reviewed email exchanges that corroborate parts of the account. Neither his lawyer nor the state officials shared the identity of the man, who, through intermediaries, declined interview requests.
The unraveling of his American dream began on May 28, when he and his wife and their college-age daughter headed to a New Jersey office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, known as U.S.C.I.S., for a final interview. After 16 years of effort, they were within weeks of securing a green card — and with it, permanent legal residency in the United States.
Everything was proceeding as expected, the lawyer said, until the man was asked whether he had ever registered to vote. He answered, “No,” but was presented with evidence to the contrary.
The man would later learn that the problem stemmed from a visit to a motor vehicle office to renew his license in August 2023, soon after the new software was implemented.
He had never voted, the lawyer said, and quickly had his name purged from the rolls. But the damage was already done. About a month after the interview, his green card application was denied. That meant he automatically lost work authorization.
According to the lawyer, on July 24, three days after Ms. Sherrill disclosed the state’s error, federal officials informed the man, his wife and their daughter that they had been formally placed in immigration removal proceedings.
New Jersey has rebuffed a demand by the U.S. Justice Department for the addresses and places of birth of the thousands of people affected by the registration error, and it has been racing to remove the noncitizens from the rolls. The state has mailed letters to affected individuals, in English and in Spanish, that make clear that the noncitizens who were registered to vote in error between June 2023 and June 2024 had disclosed that they were not U.S. citizens. But the form letters, from the “Legal Affairs Division” of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, are unsigned and do not identify the noncitizens by name, leaving lawyers concerned they may not satisfy immigration officials.
Sean Higgins, a spokesman for the governor, said the commission would provide signed, personalized letters to noncitizens who seek them.
The Trump administration’s hard-line stance on immigration and its intense interest in voter fraud is likely to make things even trickier for noncitizens who try to prove to an immigration court that they never knowingly made a “false claim to citizenship,” a key legal standard, said Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.
“If this policy is applied fairly it should allow these individuals to avoid difficulty in the naturalization process,” Professor Mukherjee said. “But I don’t think that anyone can reasonably trust U.S.C.I.S. to do the right thing here.”
New Jersey’s acknowledgment of the error may give some of the noncitizens a better shot of overcoming claims that they misrepresented themselves, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer and a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council. But residents who were inadvertently registered to vote before getting a green card are “in real trouble,” Mr. Reichlin-Melnick said, and “any noncitizen who voted is unquestionably at risk of deportation.”
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