The Department of Justice confirmed on Wednesday that FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will not serve as monitors during the midterm elections.
The statement came in a court filing in the NAACP’s lawsuit against the administration over the monitoring program, Reuters reported. It also said monitors will not act as law enforcement while monitoring. Instead, they will observe the voting process at polling locations and take notes.
However, employees from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will serve as election monitors.
The US Department of Justice said that agents and employees from the FBI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will not be serving as monitors during the midterm elections https://t.co/5IPajAQbn2
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 29, 2026
The filing came after the NAACP sued to prohibit prosecutors and other law enforcement personnel from serving as monitors, claiming the Trump administration’s plans amount to voter intimidation.
Washington's secretary of state says a "preliminary investigation" of the list DOJ sent to the state confirms it includes U.S. citizens and also people who are not registered to vote or have "inactive" status and would not have been sent a ballot https://t.co/Aft8ktF3lP https://t.co/AACxTFG1Dx
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 29, 2026
The deployment for the upcoming midterms will be the largest in DOJ history, with 1,000 department lawyers and staff being dispatched as poll watchers. This is a tenfold increase from the 100 that were deployed during the primaries.
The NAACP filed the lawsuit to block the administration’s plan to deploy the election monitors.
From The Guardian:
The Trump administration has been sued over its plans to deploy “a historic number” of election monitors to polling stations during next month’s midterm elections.
The bid “stands to jeopardize” the elections and could “interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation”, according to the NAACP, which filed a lawsuit against Harmeet Dhillon, head of the justice department’s civil rights division, who has said she hopes to send 1,000 monitors to midterm polling sites in November.
“To be clear, there is no federal statute that gives the US Department of Justice [DoJ] the right to send their so-called ‘election monitors’ to polling sites across the country, and this administration has made clear its intent to disrupt and interfere with the way elections are run in our country,” said Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel, who served in Dhillon’s role under Joe Biden.
The NAACP lawsuit seeks to force the Trump administration to release records regarding the deployment of the monitors. The NAACP said it requested such records under the Freedom of Information Act on 1 September, but said the Department of Justice had failed to comply.
“The timely release of these documents is critical to protecting voter rights and ensuring election integrity,” the NAACP said in a statement.
On Sunday Todd Blanche, the attorney general, confirmed that election monitors will be sent to all 50 states. Speaking to Fox News, however, he downplayed the role of the monitors.
“Since the 60s, the Department of Justice has monitored elections. Every single election’s been monitored,” Blanche said. “This administration, President Trump, is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our generation, multiple generations.”
The Justice Department countered the criticism by emphasizing that the election monitors will not interfere with the voting process.