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

Vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance competed on stage during their only debate in the 2024 US election campaign.

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

Here are some of the claims made by each candidate, fact-checked by the BBC Verify team.

CLAIM: Vance: “We have 20 to 25 million illegal immigrants here in the country.”

VERDICT: These numbers are well above estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

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

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrants have come to the U.S., as many may have evaded law enforcement, but several estimates put the number at about half as high as Vance claims.

A report The estimate released earlier this year by the Office of Homeland Security put the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. at 11 million in January 2022.

Pew Research Center and the Institute for Migration Policy came to similar estimates for 2022 and 2021.

And the Center for Immigration Studies It is estimated that there were approximately 12 million illegal immigrants as of May 2023.

CLAIM: Rolling: “Your 2025 project will have a pregnancy registry.”

VERDICT: This is wrong – Project 2025 does not mention a pregnancy registry. There is no evidence that Donald Trump plans to introduce one.

Here, Walz tried to connect Vance and Trump to Project 2025 — a wish list of ultra-conservative policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation think tank.

Walz may be referring to a section in the document that says a future Trump administration “should use all available tools, including cutting funding, to ensure that each state accurately reports how many abortions occur within its borders.” take place”.

Project 2025 suggests that U.S. health departments and states should collect such data, but does not refer to a new federal pregnancy registration agency.

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

CLAIM: Vance: “Iran received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets from the Harris administration.”

VERDICT: That's wrong. There is no evidence that the Biden-Harris administration has lifted the freeze on more than $100 billion (£75 billion).

Just hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel, Vance criticized the administration over Iran.

Due to international sanctions, billions of dollars in foreign banks have been frozen in Iran. About $50 billion As part of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama in July 2015, $200,000 in “usable assets” were released.

But Kamala Harris was not part of his administration.

Under the Biden administration, there were two deals between the US and Iran that released around $16 billion in Iranian assets.

One was an extension of a deal introduced by Trump in 2018 that gave Iran access to $10 billion in frozen assets.

The other was a September 2023 deal between the U.S. and Iran that swapped prisoners and released $6 billion in Iranian assets.

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

BBC Verify asked the Trump-Vance campaign what the basis for their $100 billion demand is.

CLAIM: Walz said, “Donald Trump has paid no federal taxes in the last 15 years,” then added, “in the last year as president.”

VERDICT: The first part of this claim – which was posted on Walz's X account during the debate – is incorrect. The second part is true.

Trump has paid taxes for the past 15 years, but none in the final year of his presidency.

A 2022 reportof the House Ways and Means Committee, released Trump's federal income tax returns for 2015 to 2020.

They show that he paid:

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

However, Trump paid no federal income tax in 2020, his final year as president — so Walz was right in that one year.

CLAIM: Vance: “We are the cleanest economy in the world.”

VERDICT: According to two global rankings of overall environmental performance, this is false.

In 2024, the United States ranked 34th in the world according to the Environmental Performance Index (EPI). It ranked 27th in the world for air quality and 9th for water hygiene.

On one measure, minimizing agriculture's dangers to the environment, the United States was at the forefront.

Another monitoring body, the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), assessed the USA 57 by 63 countries and the European Union in 2024.

CLAIM: Walz: “He promised…'I will build you a big, beautiful wall'…less than 2% of that wall was built.”

VERDICT: Even by the most conservative estimate of how much border wall was built under Trump, that number is exaggerated.

We asked the Walz campaign about his claim and they pointed us to a report that 52 miles of “new primary wall” was built under the former president.

The U.S.-Mexico border is nearly 2,000 miles long – 52 miles of wall would cover about 2.7% of it.

However, the length of the border wall built during Trump's presidency depends on what you measure.

A “border wall status” report noted in January 2021 that 52 miles of “new primary wall” were constructed under Trump, along with 33 miles of “new secondary wall.”

It says he built 458 miles when including sections where existing barriers were replaced or reinforced.

President Biden paused construction of the wall when he took office, but last year he approved the construction of 20 miles of barriers along the border in South Texas.

Reporting by Merlyn Thomas, Lucy Gilder and Jake Horton

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher breaks down the race for the White House in his weekly newsletter, US Election Unspun.

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