At a Tuesday press conference in New York, a senior Department of Homeland Security official confirmed that ICE agents will not be deployed to monitor voting locations during the upcoming November midterms. The assurance came directly from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who addressed the matter publicly.
Mullin clarified that ICE personnel would only show up at polling sites under specific circumstances — either in response to a security threat at that location or while executing an arrest warrant for an individual already under active investigation by the agency. As reported by NBC News, Mullin stated, “ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places.”
When pressed on whether agents might step inside voting facilities, Mullin acknowledged that a warrant would justify entry. “If we’re serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be,” he said.
According to the senior DHS official, no new directives have been issued to ICE officers regarding Election Day activities; they are expected to perform only their standard duties.
These remarks arrive against the backdrop of unsupported allegations from both President Donald Trump and Mullin suggesting that more than a quarter-million noncitizens have registered to vote across multiple states. Mullin has gone so far as to warn state election officials that they could face imprisonment if they refuse to adopt the administration’s approach for scrubbing voter rolls of suspected noncitizens.
Resistance has emerged from various state officials who are reluctant to hand over voter roll data containing sensitive personal details, including social security numbers. To date, the administration has offered no proof to back its claims of widespread noncitizen voter registration.
The DHS statement leaves unresolved the broader conflict over access to voter roll information, and the source account offers no additional information on that front.