Denver sued the Trump administration this morning to keep armed ICE agents away from the polls on Tuesday 3 November, 54 days from now. Democracy Forward filed in federal court in Washington for the city, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS, naming Homeland Security, ICE and Secretary Markwayne Mullin. They want armed officers barred from polling places under the law against "troops or armed men" at the polls. The complaint calls it a "specter" that "threatens the freedom of this upcoming election." The plaintiffs claim it; no judge has ruled.
Mullin answered first. "ICE isn't there to patrol the polling places," he said at a New York news conference on Tuesday 1 September; agents would come only "if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant." His election official, Heather Honey, told the secretaries of state on Wednesday 25 February there would be "no ICE presence at polling locations." No written policy puts agents at the polls.
A Narativ reader, Karen Brownfield, wrote the FiveStack: "My fear is that people will be afraid to vote. The Hispanic people I know are afraid to register. I told them I would take them and protect them, and they said no way."
UnidosUS put a number on that fear: 44 percent of 3,000 registered Latino voters said they or people in their community fear immigration agents will harass or arrest them, citizens or not. Below, Narativ sets that vote against Trump's margin in all seven swing states, and the one study that says fear cuts the other way.
