With the November midterm elections on the horizon, doubts are growing about the possible presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at polling places. Against this backdrop, a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) promised state election officials this week that there will be no federal immigration agents at polling places, amid growing fears of possible federal intervention in processes that constitutionally fall under state jurisdiction.
During a call on Wednesday with election officials from across the country, Heather Honey, deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at DHS, addressed the issue. “Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation,” she said, according to several national media outlets, citing people who participated in the meeting. “There will be no ICE presence at polling locations.”
The statement came during a conversation involving representatives from the Justice Department, the FBI, the Postal Service, the Election Assistance Commission, and DHS itself. The meeting was scheduled as part of the usual coordination efforts ahead of the midterm elections.
Federal law prohibits the deployment of “troops or armed men” at polling stations, and the Constitution grants states the authority to administer their own elections. However, President Donald Trump has shown openness to unprecedented federal involvement in these state processes, and has even said that his administration should “nationalize voting.”
Concerns grew after former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on his podcast: “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again”. Like other Republicans, including President Trump, Bannon has suggested without evidence that there was fraud in the 2020 election.
Shortly thereafter, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she could not guarantee that ICE agents would not be near polling places in November.
According to a Politico report, several Democratic secretaries of state used Wednesday’s call to seek explicit assurances. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber asked if states would be notified in advance of immigration operations at polling places. Honey responded that this premise was “disinformation.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, questioned the official’s credibility in statements to NBC News. “Heather Honey is an election denier with zero integrity. The fact that she’s speaking for the Department of Homeland Security is an embarrassment to election administrators who recognize her past work with the Cyber Ninjas audit and all that nonsense,” he said. “I’m just not convinced.”
Honey previously worked as a subcontractor for Cyber Ninjas, the company hired by the Republican-controlled Arizona State Senate to review the 2020 election results in Maricopa County. That audit found no evidence of fraud and was widely criticized by experts.
From Maine, Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows also expressed reservations after the meeting. “I did not walk away from this meeting reassured that the federal government wouldn’t try to interfere in state sovereignty over the election,” she said. “When we asked about state sovereignty and could the federal government make public statements reinforcing the constitutional principle that the states, not the federal government, were in charge of elections, there was a stunned silence.”
According to the Politico report, several participants said the call offered little information beyond the commitment on ICE. One described it as an attempt to “cover your butt,” suggesting that the administration was simply seeking to put on record that it had consulted state officials.
The concern is not limited to the physical presence of immigration agents. Trump has continued to promote false claims about voter fraud by non-citizens, including in his recent State of the Union address. Furthermore, a recent FBI search of the Fulton County, Georgia, election center, linked to discredited claims about Trump’s defeat in 2020, further raised alarms among election administrators.
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