(Washington, DC) \u2013 The\u00a0United States government should order federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers not to operate in the vicinity of polling places, early voting locations, or drop boxes during the midterm electoral period, Human Rights Watch said today. The presence of these federal agents could deter people from voting.\u00a0
\u201cICE officers\u2019 abuses have already seriously affected US citizens who have been stopped, beaten, detained, deported, and even killed,\u201d said\u00a0Philippe Bolopion, executive director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cVoters should not have to fear being caught in an ICE dragnet when they head to the polls.\u201d
In-person early voting is already taking place in the majority of states. In a nationwide September\u00a0poll, 40 percent of respondents said they expect some kind of ICE presence at polls, with even higher percentages among non-white respondents expecting to see ICE agents in places people vote.\u00a0
Federal law generally\u00a0prohibits federal officials from sending \u201ctroops or armed men\u201d to voting sites.\u00a0Several state laws prohibit any armed officers, including police, from engaging in acts that could interfere with the elections or intimidate voters by their presence near polling places. Some states bar law enforcement officers, including police, from being in close proximity to polling places at all unless they are responding to a specific incident.
Despite these robust prohibitions, neither\u00a0President Donald Trump nor the heads of the US\u00a0Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the\u00a0Federal Bureau of Investigation have been willing to rule out the possibility that federal agents, including ICE, may be at places where people vote.
In March, then-Deputy Attorney General and now-Attorney General Todd Blanche said, \u201cWhy is there an objection to sending ICE to polling stations? ... Illegals can\u2019t vote. It doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d In February, Karoline Leavitt, who was White House press secretary at the time, said she could not \u201cguarantee\u201d that ICE agents won\u2019t be around a polling location in November.
In early September, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin\u00a0said there were no plans to station ICE agents at polling places but left the door open for them to be there if \u201cserving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down\u201d or if \u201cthere is a threat to that polling place.\u201d
Three lawsuits are pending in federal courts to prevent ICE from operating at the polls, with an additional court case seeking to require the government to disclose its plans regarding ICE agents at polling places. In Washington, DC, the Board of Elections in October\u00a0asked the National Guard to limit their presence near drop box locations for the midterm election following complaints that troops had been spotted near a drop box in Foggy Bottom.\u00a0
The Trump administration has long touted the idea that large numbers of noncitizens unlawfully cast ballots in US elections but has not produced any evidence suggesting that the problem exists at a scale that would have affected the result of any election, anywhere in the country. Multiple research studies, including from the\u00a0Fair Elections Center,\u00a0Bipartisan Policy Center,\u00a0Brennan Center, and the\u00a0Cato Institute, have found no evidence of mass voting by noncitizens and concluded that the problem is insignificant in electoral outcomes.
ProPublica found that federal immigration officers have detained at least 500 US citizens since the start of Trump\u2019s second term, including 36 incidents in which detained US citizens were prevented from contacting their family or lawyers for 24 hours or more. The same study also found that agents who questioned their claims of citizenship detained more than 100 US citizens, nearly all of them people of color.
In Minnesota, Human Rights Watch\u00a0found that ICE\u2019s Operation Metro Surge abuses terrified many people, causing them to stay home and miss work, school, and even essential health care appointments. US citizens of color whom Human Rights Watch interviewed at the time said they were so fearful of\u00a0racial profiling that they began carrying their passports everywhere.\u00a0
Human Rights Watch analysis also suggests that in 2025, ICE used race and ethnicity in Los Angeles as a crude proxy for identifying a person\u2019s nationality, and detained people on that basis. Perceptions of the risks associated with an encounter with ICE may well be higher among non-white communities. \u00a0
The notoriety of those incidents and of ICE\u2019s widespread abuses over the last two years risks dissuading some people from voting if they feel they are likely to encounter ICE agents near polling places, Human Rights Watch said.\u00a0
\u201cICE agents should be publicly ordered to stay away from the polls and anywhere ballots are being cast,\u201d Bolopion said.
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