Democrats are already sounding the alarm on the news that the Trump administration is exploring ways to involve federal immigration agencies in “securing” elections.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on election integrity that directs the Homeland Security Department (DHS) to help prevent non-citizens from voting in federal elections.
Watchdog group American Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act request to ICE, Border Patrol, the National Guard Bureau, and the Justice Department to find any plans to deploy immigration authorities at or near polling places in the upcoming midterm elections.
Local election officials and civil rights advocates are preparing for the possibility. NPR reported that election administrators are running “war games” to plan their response to federal officers arriving at polling places.
Virginia Democrats introduced a bill to ban immigration enforcement within 40 feet of polling places to prevent these agencies from apprehending non-citizens who try to cast votes.
Senate Democrats are looking to include a provision barring federal immigration agencies from being present at polling places, claiming it is an effort to suppress votes, Politico reported.
Democrats, elections officials and civil rights groups fear it could interfere with this November’s elections — and are scrambling for a response.
They’re warning that the White House’s deployments of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents could act as a voter suppression tool should armed officers conduct raids at or near polling locations, scaring citizens into staying home.
“You have to see what’s happening: Trump is trying to create a pretext to rig the election,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “It stands to reason that this private police [force] that he’s building is, in part, to be used to try to suppress turnout in the election.”
Senate Democrats considered a requirement banning ICE agents from polling sites as part of their demands in negotiating the Homeland Security funding bill, according to Murphy and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). But that policy was not included in Senate Democratic appropriators’ final list of demands to avoid a partial government shutdown, leaving voting rights advocates and Democratic state election officials on edge about what’s to come.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called fears of voter suppression “Democrat conspiracies” with “no basis in reality.”
“President Trump cares deeply about the integrity of our elections — and so do the millions of Americans who sent him back to office based on his pledge to secure our elections,” Jackson said in a statement. “These Democrat conspiracies have no basis in reality and their claims shouldn’t be amplified uncritically by the mainstream media. ICE is focused on removing criminal illegal aliens from [the] country, who should be nowhere near any polling places because it would be a crime for them to vote.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who is running for governor as a Democrat, told Politico that in her state, “we saw people were afraid to leave their homes for groceries, to go to work or to go to school, because of fear of wrongful arrest and imprisonment.”
She noted that if people are afraid of ICE targeting them, “that may increase fears about going to vote.”
The voter suppression angle is an interesting one, for sure. If ICE and Border Patrol end up being present at voting locations, and are doing their jobs, they will be suppressing the votes of people who are already not allowed to vote — not citizens.
Perhaps that’s what Democrats are actually afraid of here. They are not concerned about people’s safety or protecting citizens’ rights. They just don’t want any threats to their efforts to regain power. Either way, if the Trump administration decides to deploy immigration officers to polling locations, it will likely turn into yet another national debate.