A new lawsuit seeks to prevent the Trump administration from violating federal law by sending armed federal agents into polling places during the midterm elections.
The litigation comes in response to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s recent comments that the agency’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative” includes deploying immigration agents to conduct arrests and other operations at voting sites.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not be patrolling voting precincts, Mullins said during a Sept. 1 press briefing. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down. ICE’s job is immigration, customs enforcement. That’s their job. If we’re serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be.”
But in the lawsuit filed Sept. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a coalition of civil and voting rights organizations and an American city argue the DHS plan violates federal statute and will intimidate voters and cause disruptions in voting.
“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election.”
“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election. It places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot,” according to the action filed by Democracy Forward on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause, UnidosUS and the City of Denver, Colo.
And U.S. citizens have plenty to be afraid of when it comes to ICE, the lawsuit claims. “ICE has unlawfully detained more than 170 U.S. citizens. American citizens peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights have been shot and killed by ICE. And ICE agents frequently stop and question citizens — sometimes detaining them for days — based on racial profiling.”
The intimidating presence of armed immigration agents will make it harder for law enforcement and local and state elections officials to ensure elections run safely, the plaintiffs contend.
In addition, they contend the threatened deployment of armed ICE personnel to the polls represents a further attempt by President Donald Trump to disrupt U.S. elections: “This articulation of federal policy follows on the heels of months of comments, guidance changes and law enforcement activities that make clear that the administration has unlawfully claimed for itself the purported authority to send armed federal officers to polling places over the course of the 2026 midterm election.”
The lawsuit points out that such actions would violate a federal law enacted near the end of the Civil War prohibiting the placement of “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”
The legislation was motivated by congressional concern about potential executive overreach, the suit says. “Congress banned armed federal agents at election sites to provide and preserve free and fair elections, the rule of law, the right to vote, and Americans’ confidence in the sanctity of the ballot box. Defendants’ disregard for that statutory framework threatens our upcoming election.”
Members of Congress expressed similar concerns in a Sept. 4 letter to Mullins.
Democrats on the House Committee on Homeland Security said they oppose “any plans the Department may have to deploy its law enforcement officers to polling places during the 2026 midterm elections and to raise our alarm regarding the misuse of DHS resources that could result in the disenfranchisement of eligible voters.”
The letter and lawsuit come amid Trump’s expansive election-interference campaign that includes curtailing mail-in voting, threatening state and local elections officials and attempting to purge Americans from voter rolls.
It’s disturbing that neither Mullins nor other Trump officials seem to know anything about the federal statute barring deployment of armed agents at polling places, the legislators said.
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