ICE won’t be at polling places during midterms : NPR

A voter carries a ballot during early voting for New York City’s mayoral election, October 25, 2025.

Olga Fedorova/AP

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Olga Fedorova/AP

In a phone call Wednesday with many top voting officials across the country, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would not patrol polling places during this year’s midterm elections.

“Any suggestion that ICE will be present at polling places is simply misinformation,” said Heather Honey, DHS assistant secretary for election integrity, according to a participant on the call who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity. “There will be no ICE presence at polling locations.”

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams also confirmed the pledge in a social media post.

Federal law prohibits federal troops or law enforcement from interfering with voting, and states have the constitutional authority to conduct their own elections.

But throughout his second term, President Trump has been open to unprecedented federal involvement in these state processes.

He has also continued to make false claims about non-citizen voter fraud — including during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address — and those in his orbit have openly discussed the potential for immigration enforcement at polling places.

“We’re going to have ICE surround the election in November,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on his podcast earlier this month. “We are not going to stand here and allow you to rob the country again.”

Shortly after, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the comments and she responded that she “could not guarantee” that an ICE agent would not be present at a polling place in November.

All of this has sparked deep concerns from election officials from both major political parties, who say they are actively preparing for some sort of federal interference in this year’s midterms, although they have been hard-pressed to say what that involvement would look like. These concerns have grown after the FBI’s recent raid on the election center in Fulton County, Georgia, which appears directly linked to debunked claims about Trump’s 2020 loss.

During Wednesday’s midterm preparedness call — attended by representatives from the Justice Department, DHS, Postal Service and other federal agencies — several Democratic secretaries of state asked questions hinting at that uncertainty.

California Secretary of State, Democrat Shirley Weber, asked DHS official Honey whether states would be notified in advance if ICE agents were sent to polling locations.

Honey responded by saying that such a premise was “misinformation.”

The promise is especially noteworthy from Honey, who comes from the foundation of election denial that arose from Trump’s false election claims in 2020. Before her current position at DHS, she worked closely with former Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell to spread misinformation about the reliability of the nation’s election systems.