WASHINGTON—Alarmed by reports that Republican President Donald Trump will send heavily armed and violent ICE agents to the polls nationwide—to act as they did when they rampaged through Minneapolis-St. Paul—a coalition of unions and civil rights groups wants federal judges to ban the deployments.
In a 65-page brief filed in U.S. District Court in D.C., the Teachers/AFT, the Service Employees, the Painters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the NAACP, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Urban League and their allies declare that the purpose of the deployments is to intimidate and prevent voters, especially voters of color, from casting their ballots on November 3.
“Our polling sites shouldn’t look like armed camps,” Painters President Jimmy Williams Jr. said
Trump’s reported plans violate one of the few remaining sections of the 1965 federal Voting Rights Act, the lawsuit says. That section makes such intimidation, threats or coercion of voters and of people aiding them illegal. A series of rulings by the GOP-named U.S. Supreme Court majority, including three justices Trump named, has trashed the rest of the Voting Rights Act.
And the groups point out Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents literally stopped at nothing in Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities and can be expected to do so again. Two of the groups signing on to the lawsuit represent Latino and Hmong people in Minnesota.
The ICE actions there included murder, dragging elderly people from their cars, going door to door seeking people they deemed as Black, Latino, or non-white, and including them in its mass roundups, often through violence. ICE also conducted widespread infiltration and surveillance of protesters before demonstrations began. The unions and their allies expect a rerun nationwide unless the judges on the D.C. court halt it in advance by a nationwide injunction.
The lawsuit came as news reports said Trump’s aides have told him of the high possibility he will lose the docile Republican majorities in both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, enraging him but also sending him on the campaign trail to rally his MAGA base. Trump’s inflation, his tariffs, the rising prices of food and rent, and the 27% increase in one year in gasoline prices as a result of his war on Iran have soured hundreds of thousands of his supporters.
“Black, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, immigrant, and naturalized citizen voters as well as voters from mixed-status families fear questioning, arrest, detention, surveillance, or use of force by federal agents while casting their ballot on Election Day, conducting voter registration, or serving as an election official,” the groups said in a joint statement on September 17.
Several of the organizations, including those representing Latinos and Asian-American people, said ICE’s tactics and the Trump regime’s threats to deploy its agents remind them of the days when the Ku Klux Klan reigned before the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.
“Deploying federal agents to strike the fear of god into voters at polling places is a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook,” said Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher who also holds a law degree.
“It’s intimidation pure and simple and has no place in a true democracy. No matter your politics, American citizens need to be able to exercise their basic democratic rights without running the gauntlet of an armed, masked militia.
“Our goal is to ensure all those eligible to vote, particularly those covered by our civil rights laws, can access the ballot box free from coercion and interference. These midterms, we are doing everything we can to reassure Americans voting is safe and secure. And that when they turn out, hopefully in overwhelming numbers, the will of the people cannot be denied.”
“Our hard-working care and service workers, and the family and neighbors they’ll be voting alongside, won’t allow for intimidation when it comes to casting their votes,” said SEIU Executive Vice President Joseph Bryant.
“No eligible voter should be afraid to make their voice heard. Voting is about…building a better future for our families. When that future and our rights are threatened, our members will throw down to stop such disenfranchisement.”
Painters President Williams, whose union has a high proportion of Latino members, called Trump’s threats “election interference pure and simple.”
As a union, “We have an obligation to stand up for democratic principles whenever they are attacked. Deploying federal agents to polling sites has no place in this country. It is authoritarian fearmongering and a blatant attempt to influence our elections.
“American citizens have the right to engage in our democracy without having masked federal agents trying to deter them…We cannot sit on the sidelines while this administration again attempts to game the system because they are worried about the results.”
“The federal government has claimed authority to station armed federal agents to unlawfully operate in the vicinity of voting locations,” the lawsuit begins. “It has reversed longstanding departmental policies that prohibited armed federal immigration and law enforcement authorities from entering those locations.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s ICE and the Border Patrol conduct “unprecedented law enforcement operations targeting communities of color in the lead-up to the election, including a sweeping national voter fraud investigation, an unusual voter surveillance operation targeting naturalized citizens, and months-long violent and intrusive immigration operations.
“Federal law expressly prohibits sending armed federal agents to voting locations. Neither the Constitution nor federal law grants federal agencies any role in assessing or policing voter eligibility or regulating election administration. Yet the administration repeatedly sought to interfere with election systems and announced its readiness to unlawfully deploy law enforcement to voting sites.
“The result is predictable: Voters across the country—particularly Black, Latino, and Asian voters, naturalized citizens, and members of mixed-status families—are afraid to vote.”
No date has been set for a hearing on the case.
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