Denver preemptively sues to keep Trump admin from sending ICE officers to polling sites
With midterm elections now less than eight weeks away, several advocacy groups and the city of Denver have preemptively filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from being stationed at polling sites. It’s the first lawsuit of its kind to be filed against the administration.
They want the federal district court in Washington, D.C., to rule that stationing armed guards outside polling places would be unlawful. They’re also asking the court to ban federal officers from carrying weapons not just near polling sites but places where votes are collected, as well.
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“The presence of federal force at the polls interferes with the smooth administration of elections at the local level,” the lawsuit states. “It disrupts voting and makes it more difficult for state and local election officials and law enforcement to do their jobs by making polling places spaces of confrontation.”
Why they’re suing
In addition to the City of Denver, the lawsuit was filed by the legal group Democracy Forward on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS.
Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said ICE officers will be allowed to enter polling places to serve warrants or conduct other ICE business, or if there’s a “threat.”
“ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places,” Mullin told reporters on Sept. 1. “We’re there to enforce specific threats.”
The lawsuit claims it’s against federal law for military personnel or other “armed” agents to be “at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”
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Non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, cannot vote in federal, state, and most local elections.
The Trump administration has not issued any official order or guidance for stationing ICE officers outside of polling sites, but there have been calls by Trump allies for ICE agents to patrol the polls to keep noncitizens from voting.
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” former White House strategist Steve Bannon said on his podcast last week. “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again, and you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
Bannon has long perpetuated conspiracy theories that widespread voter fraud caused President Donald Trump to lose the 2020 election.
Bannon also called for Trump to send U.S. Army troops to voting locations and to “nationalize the election.” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said the military has no plans to deploy active-duty or National Guard troops to polling places.
Democrats raise concerns
The lawsuit comes after Democrats have already raised concerns over the potential for the administration to send armed officers to polling sites. Last week, Democrats on the House’s Homeland Security Committee wrote a letter to Mullin “demanding he follow, and learn, Federal law regarding Trump administration threats to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling sites.”
“Concerningly, neither you nor the officials who work for you appear to be familiar with Federal laws regarding the presence of law enforcement at polling places,” the committee members wrote in their letter. “Since your confirmation hearing, you have demonstrated a disturbing lack of awareness of relevant laws and policies on the matter.”
They also raised concerns over reports that ICE built a voter database to help fight voter fraud. On Tuesday, the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court for permission to use the database ahead of midterms.
In the emergency request, Solicitor General John Sauer said a federal appeals court that blocked the plan made it “harder to detect ineligible voters, undermining the integrity of federal elections and public confidence in the results of those elections.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration has spent the last 18 months building a verification system that merged a database containing immigrants’ citizenship status with Social Security information and other federal records.