ICE-ing the 2026 Election

Election Day 2026, 6:00 am - Bangor, Maine

It’s Election Day 2026, and the sun hasn’t fully risen yet as the clock strikes 6 and polling sites across New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maine, and just over half of Kentucky open to voters. Not long after the first voters step inside, the raids begin. ICE and CBP agents dressed in low-level military tactical gear storm several public transit hubs next to or directly across from polling sites. Initially, they’re careful not to affect the polling sites themselves. 

Agents detain anyone in the area, including campaign volunteers who are there to make a last-minute push to voters. They make a big show of scanning people's faces with their cell phones, challenging people to prove their citizenship, and establishing that no one is safe from their wrath. National media organizations are immediately on the scene, with several pushing pre-agreed-upon narratives spreading propaganda faster than the polls can open across the country.

News of the raids spreads within communities and protesters start showing up. Soon after, the local police arrive, though it's unclear who called them to the scene. Maybe they expected this after several early voting sites across the country have already seen ICE agents walking the lines of waiting voters and scanning faces. It’s difficult to establish who is there protesting month 17 of illegal and violent ICE overreach across the country and who is arriving trying to vote. Tear gas and pepper spray are deployed, and local police establish a perimeter a few blocks away as they tell arriving local reporters there is an “ongoing law enforcement operation.” 

Election Day 2026, 6:55 am - Washington, DC 

It’s not even 7 a.m., and the election outcome is already heading to a Supreme Court fight. Does it even matter? Many Police departments have traded their mandate to protect the community for military-grade weapons and lethal toys, not the standard for community policing. 

When police chiefs have pushed back as ICE has occupied their cities, they’ve noted how outnumbered and outgunned their departments are. If they’ve been unwilling to arrest agents who witness crashing into other vehicles, kidnapping people before dropping them off on the other side of town, or violating their neighbors' constitutional rights, it seems unlikely they’ll step up and defend polling sites and people’s right to vote. 

But let's step back a moment. Many would describe community responses to ICE invasions and occupations of US cities as victories, and rightfully so: Kidnappings thwarted, immigrants supported by their neighbors, and large numbers of the occupiers ultimately pushed out. 

But what if those defeats were considered wins by the White House? A common theme across Los Angeles, Chicago, Minnesota, and Maine was that local and state police did nothing to prevent or prosecute blatant rights violations. Even worse, those state and local police officers were often called out for antagonizing protestors and escalating non-lethal but still very violent responses to the protestors, not just protecting ICE, but facilitating their work.

Election Day 2026, 7:30 am - Bangor, Maine

The local police presence confuses things further and makes everyone rightfully terrified. It’s worth noting that police presence at or near polling locations suppresses non-white voters and voters with prior contact with the criminal justice system. So attempts to “reassure” voters by increasing police presence are expected to lower voting turnout.

It’s real-time, national voter suppression driven by the small number of corporate media owners with social media influencers willing to spread [racist and fascistic] lies for profit. So the best play for local governments invested in protecting their citizens' rights may be to keep local law enforcement away entirely, and leave ICE to own the fallout.

Election Day 2026, 8:00 am - Newark, New Jersey

For many in the community, the fear is the lack of protection from law enforcement: "The police won’t protect us."

So maybe the real weapon for ensuring democracy on the ground is the state attorneys general. Several blue states have had very prominent and successful AGs who have stood against "unjust" policies by the current Trump administration. The fact that states administer elections provides the legal basis, as it’s a rare case where state law can actually supersede the powers of federal agents, a rare inversion of the default where local authorities would typically defer to their federal counterparts.

While state AGs could make a point of training state and local police on the nuances of election law in their jurisdictions, they are fully reliant on those police to enforce those laws, at least on Election Day. State AGs aren’t in a position to stop ICE in the streets, nor to stop the spread of the propaganda online. At best, they could have standby poll workers ready to deploy to polling sites that are raided and abandoned.

Election Day 2026, 8:00 am - Jackson, Mississippi

Or maybe the fascists focus these attacks in blue areas of red states, knowing the police, Attorney General, and Governor will support their lies. Maybe they even use their inaction in blue states to underpin the lie that local officials in those states blocked their ability to protect the election. 

Present Day - In your community

So what can we do? We must apply the lessons of Minnesota citizen ICE patrols to our voting infrastructure. We need regular citizens monitoring for ICE presence outside polling sites. Costumes, whistles, brass bands, the whole Minnesota treatment. Those neighbors can post the actual situation outside their polling site on their local social media and text chains. Countering disinformation and threats with real information, alerting people so they can stay safe if ICE actually shows up somewhere, and allowing voting to continue uninterrupted at 99.9% of voting locations that ICE doesn’t have the resources to disrupt.

It will be the very real threat of systemic state violence that ICE and CBP can project that changes the equation for voters. 

While some who are already planning to vote will steel their resolve and make a point of voting anyway, how many will worry about their personal safety and skip the polls? How many on the fence will decide to go to the gym, or order food delivery, ducking the text message reminders from friends and family urging them to vote? 

Our country has a long history of people dying for demanding or daring to try to exercise their right to vote. Congressional Democrats clearly have no plan to stop ICE from committing whatever violence they choose, wherever they choose to inflict it. 

So it will require the rest of us, the regular folks, to stand up, just as we have in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minnesota. State and County Democratic Party Democratic Committees should be game planning with local officials, their members, and their communities. It’s not a question of if ICE and CBP will try to interfere on Election Day. It’s a question of whether communities can out-organize them.