Fact-checked claims from the Vance-Walz vice-presidential debate

Vice-presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance sparred on stage during their one and only debate of the 2024 US election campaign.

Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a Republican senator representing Ohio, traded claims on key election issues including immigration, foreign policy and reproductive rights.

Here are some claims from each candidate which the BBC Verify team fact-checked.

CLAIM: Vance: “We’ve got 20-25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”

VERDICT: These numbers are much higher than estimates for the number of illegal immigrants in the US.

Vance made this claim while criticising the border policies of President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

It is impossible to know how many illegal immigrants have come to the US, as many will have evaded law enforcement agencies, but several estimates put the number at around half the number Vance claims.

A report published by the Office of Homeland Security earlier this year estimated the number of illegal immigrants living in the US, as of January 2022, at 11 million.

Pew Research Center also came up with an estimate of 11 million in the same year.

The non-partisan Migration Policy Institute estimated there were about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US in 2021.

And conservative think tank the Center for Immigration Studies estimated there were approximately 12 million in May 2023.

CLAIM: Walz: “Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies.”

VERDICT: Project 2025 does not mention a registry of pregnancies and there is no evidence Trump is planning to introduce one.

Here, Walz was trying to link Vance and Trump to Project 2025 – a wish list of ultra-conservative policy proposals by the Heritage Foundation think tank.

Walz might be referring to a section in the document which states that a future Trump administration “should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders”.

Project 2025 suggests that US health authorities and states should collect such data, but it does not refer to any new federal agency to register pregnancies.

Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025 – though dozens of former Trump administration officials have contributed to the think tank’s proposals.

CLAIM: Vance: “Iran has received over $100bn in unfrozen assets by the Harris administration.”

VERDICT: This is false. There is no evidence that the Biden-Harris administration has unfrozen over $100bn (£75bn).

Speaking just hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack against Israel, Vance criticised the government over Iran.

Iran has had billions of dollars frozen in foreign banks as a result of international sanctions. Around $50bn of “useable assets” were unfrozen as part of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama in July 2015.

But Kamala Harris was not part of his administration.

There have been two agreements between the US and Iran under the Biden administration which released around $16bn in Iranian assets.

One was an extension of a deal introduced by Trump in 2018 which allowed Iran to access $10bn of frozen assets.

The other was a deal between the US and Iran made in September 2023, in which prisoners were exchanged and $6bn of Iranian assets released.

The deal stated that the unfrozen funds could only be used by Iran for humanitarian purposes.

We have asked the Trump-Vance campaign what the basis for their $100bn claim is.

CLAIM: Walz said “Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years”. He then added “in the last year as president”.

VERDICT: The first claim is false, the second true.

Trump has paid tax over the last 15 years but according to a report, he did not pay any in the last year of his presidency.

A 2022 report, by the House Ways and Means Committee, released Trump’s federal income tax returns for the years 2015 to 2020.

They show he paid:

• In 2015, $641,931
• In 2016, $750
• In 2017, $750
• In 2018, $999,466
• In 2019, $133,445

However, in 2020, his last year as president, Trump did not pay any federal income tax – so Walz was right on this year, after correcting himself during the debate.

Before becoming president in 2016, Trump declined to disclose his tax returns.

Reporting by Merlyn Thomas, Lucy Gilder & Jake Horton

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter.

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