ICE is showing up near places where Americans are going to vote — and voting-rights groups say the presence of federal immigration agents is already creating fear among voters and election workers.
The latest example came Monday in Santa Maria, California, where ICE detained a person in a parking lot next to an active ballot drop box.
Voters had to pass through the same area where the agents were operating to reach the drop box.
The incident was reported by Democracy Docket and detailed in an amended federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
And California isn’t the only place raising alarms.
In Minnesota, officials say federal immigration enforcement has already begun affecting how election workers prepare for the possibility of agents appearing at voting locations.
Hennepin County joined the lawsuit Wednesday, bringing with it a series of examples involving federal agents inside election-related spaces.
According to the amended complaint, federal investigators working for the Department of Homeland Security have entered election spaces three times over the past five months — once at a city elections office and twice at an early-voting polling place inside the Hennepin County Government Center.
ICE agents also made at least two arrests in the building’s lobby near the current early-voting location, according to the complaint.
Several election workers witnessed the arrests.
The county says some became distressed, reported feeling unsafe at work and, in some cases, were reassigned to other locations.
Now Hennepin County is devoting significant resources to preparing for the possibility that federal agents could appear at voting sites.
Election officials have spent more than 100 hours developing and conducting training on how workers should respond, including de-escalation techniques, evacuation plans and procedures for removing unauthorized people from polling places.
The county has also developed eight contingency plans addressing the possibility of federal agents at election sites.
According to the lawsuit, those plans account for 38% of the county’s risk-mitigation planning for the November election.
And the concern appears to be reaching voters.
The amended complaint points to a nonprofit contracted by Hennepin County to work with African immigrant communities.
The organization says its response rate to door-knocking efforts has plunged from 40% to 45% in previous years to just 5% to 10% this year.
It reported no voting pledges and just one voter registration this year, compared with hundreds in prior years.
The complaint does not establish that ICE activity caused the decline.
But the plaintiffs argue the numbers show how fear surrounding federal immigration enforcement may be spilling into civic participation.
Hennepin County officials also say their elections call center is now receiving questions roughly every day from residents worried about federal agents at polling places.
Callers want to know how the county would respond, what protections voters would have and what they should do if they become afraid to vote in person.
Those developments are now central to an expanded lawsuit originally filed last month by the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause, UnidosUS and the City and County of Denver.
The original case challenged what the plaintiffs described as a Department of Homeland Security policy allowing armed ICE officers to go to polling places to serve warrants and conduct immigration enforcement.
Wednesday’s amended complaint adds Hennepin County as a plaintiff and expands the case to include the Department of Justice, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
It also adds a claim under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation, threats and coercion connected to voting.
The plaintiffs now also allege that the FBI has adopted a policy allowing armed agents to go to polling places for election-related enforcement.
They point in part to comments Patel made during a Sept. 15 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Asked whether the FBI would send personnel to polling places, Patel said the bureau had election-crimes coordinators in all 56 field offices and would not “shy away” from election-integrity efforts.
But the government has not acknowledged that Patel’s remarks amount to the formal polling-place policy alleged by the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs argue that recent federal law-enforcement activity, administration statements and the effects they say are already showing up among voters and election workers amount to intimidation prohibited by the Voting Rights Act.
They say the presence of armed federal officers could be particularly intimidating to naturalized citizens, people in mixed-status families and voters perceived to be foreign-born.
And with voting already underway in parts of the country, they’re asking a federal court to intervene before Election Day.
The case now presents a question that could become increasingly important as the midterms approach:
What happens when the people running elections have to spend hundreds of hours preparing for federal agents to show up at the polls — while voters are calling election offices because they’re afraid to vote in person?
For the plaintiffs, that’s already evidence that the presence of federal immigration agents around voting sites is having an effect.
And they want the court to do something about it before Election Day.
