Anxiety about ICE For the Trump administration, polls are a double-edged sword: By raising awareness of fears that federal immigration agents will illegally attack voters, activists and journalists face threats that help the federal government in its efforts to intimidate voters.
“Even if it’s just a rumor [ICE at the polls] It spreads fear. That’s not what we want,” said Daniela Padilla, deputy director of Texas for All, a coalition of statewide organizations working on democracy and justice issues. “Even if your story is ‘We’re watching ICE in the polls,’ that could scare voters.”
“The biggest threat we face in Texas this year is voter suppression.”
In Texas, a state whose population is 40 percent Latino, the Republican Party’s long-held grip on power now finds itself in question, amid real concerns that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could suddenly appear in targeted communities, discouraging people from going out to vote on Tuesday. But while the possibility of election interference has been cited as one of several “big issues” in this year’s midterm elections, Padilla said, “the biggest threat we face in Texas this year is voter suppression.”
This repression can take many forms. In Tarrant County, for example, local officials closed 92 polling places, and reports of early voting showed that some election officials mistakenly turned away eligible voters. Padilla and several Texas organizers working on election integrity and voting rights told The Intercept that they are not only worried about ICE actually getting close to the polls, but also that reporters are amplifying the Trump administration’s stated plan to “surround the polls” with ICE and federal agents, which could inadvertently serve as a form of voter suppression.
Federal and state laws prohibit federal immigration agents from entering polling places and prohibit any form of voter intimidation. These laws have not stopped the Trump administration and its allies from threatening to deploy ICE and military personnel across the country during the election. In August, the Justice Department announced plans to send at least 1,000 federal monitors to monitor the midterm votes, prompting several states to say they would not let them into polling locations. As states like Maine prepare to respond to the federal presence at polling places, the Justice Department claimed to Newsweek that it “never said” it would send federal law enforcement officers to polling places.
“The Trump administration has been fear-mongering for months and refusing to say they won’t send ICE to the polls,” said Emily French, policy director for Common Cause Texas. “I think the primary function of the Trump administration’s discussion around ICE at the polls is to scare people into staying home on Election Day.”
Brianna Brown, executive director of the Texas Organizing Project, said disinformation is a common voter suppression tactic in Texas. “So we’re trying to reassure people that it’s safe to vote,” she said.
Texas offers one of the most dramatic events possible for the U.S. Senate, with Democratic Rep. James Talarico leading in polls over the state’s scandal-plagued Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a race that could give Texas a Democratic senator for the first time since the 1990s. Brown said the state of 32 million people has enough voter suppression tactics even without ICE, pointing to a 2021 bill that would ban drive-in voting, weaken protections for voters with disabilities and give more power to pollsters appointed on behalf of candidates or parties.
“Texas is like a perfect storm,” Brown said.
When ICE showed up at a polling place in San Antonio in May — the first known case of ICE at a polling place in the country during this year’s primary election — the county sheriff kicked the agents out. Even so, federal agents don’t appear to be targeting anyone in the voting process; They arrived on the scene shortly after state troopers with whom they worked closely stopped someone in a polling place parking lot.
That day, staff from the Texas Organizing Project and a group of civic and voting rights groups as part of the Texas Election Protection Coalition helped coordinate contacts with local sheriffs to remove ICE from the scene.
The coalition of states is part of a nationwide effort to protect this year’s elections from federal or other interference. In Texas, the Lawyers Committee and several other groups, including the Barbara Jordan Leadership Institute, Common Cause Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project, have been training people to help ensure voters know their rights on Election Day and to ensure they report any instances of voter intimidation to a national hotline — whether eligible voters are mistakenly turned away or someone spots ICE.
“We want to inform people, but we don’t want to scare them into voting,” said Carnet Turner-Osborne, executive director of the Barber-Jordan Leadership Institute. She said she hasn’t heard many concerns about ICE being present near polling places in Tarrant County, her home state, and people can vote at any polling place in the county. But she said that for voters in areas that are hot spots for ICE activity and other forms of voter suppression, the organization has told them to consider voting at other eligible locations.
Turner-Osborne said the organization wants to help people prepare. “But I don’t want it to be a way to discourage people from voting.”