Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been sued in a bid to block armed federal immigration agents from polling sites during November’s midterm elections.
Mullin said last week that armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would be authorized to conduct enforcement operations at polling places, including serving warrants and detaining individuals suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
But according to the suit—which was filed Thursday in federal court by a coalition of voter advocacy groups and the city of Denver, Colorado—the law prohibits federal officials from ordering or placing “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” unless they’re “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”
“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election,” the suit alleges. “It places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot.”
The suit comes as Trump officials have repeatedly denied having concrete plans to deploy federal agents to voting sites, while at the same time refusing to rule out the possible presence of agents.
Mullin told reporters last week that, “ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places,” but that agents wouldn’t hesitate to appear and serve warrants to people they’ve “been actively tracking down.”
According to the lawsuit, even U.S. citizens would “reasonably fear” interactions with ICE at polling places, since immigration agents have unlawfully detained more than 170 U.S. citizens since Trump’s immigration crackdown began last year.
Agents also frequently stop U.S. citizens and question them based on their race, and two U.S. citizens—Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti—were shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis in January, the complaint added.
“The presence of federal force at the polls interferes with the smooth administration of elections at the local level,” the suit argues. “It disrupts voting and makes it more difficult for state and local election officials and other law enforcement to do their jobs by making polling places spaces of confrontation.”
The suit asks the court to declare DHS’s polling place policy to be unlawful and prevent ICE agents from operating or carrying weapons in the vicinity of open polling places, including drop boxes.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment. DHS was named in the suit alongside Mullin, ICE, and acting ICE director David Venturella.
Although Thursday’s lawsuit is prospective, it noted that federal immigration agents have already conducted law enforcement operations at various polling places nationwide.
ICE agents “swarmed” the parking lot of a polling site in San Antonio, Texas, in May to detain an individual “in full of view of voters” before the county sheriff directed them to leave the premises, the suit stated.
In early June, “a couple vehicles worth” of ICE agents visited an active polling place in Ventura County, California, which local elections officials and volunteers described as “very intimidating for someone exercising their right to vote.”
And in late June, ICE agents entered an active polling place in Syracuse, New York, to confront a poll worker over a five-month-old social media post about Good’s killing.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that voter fraud is widespread and tried to impose onerous new restrictions on voters—including trying to control who can cast a mail-in ballot—despite court documents and independent audits finding that electoral fraud is vanishingly rare.
In February, Trump called on Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” elections in at least 15 states, despite the Constitution giving states the authority to carry out elections.
Election officials in Denver—whose Democratic mayor, Mike Johnston, has clashed with Trump— have already begun training to identify federal agents in plain clothes, document their presence, request assistance, and de-escalate interactions, according to the lawsuit.
