ICE reverses, admits it may have trove of documents on agents at polling places

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers have told a court that the agency may have thousands of documents relevant to Democrats’ demand for the Trump administration’s possible plans to deploy immigration agents at the polls this fall.

Still, with the midterms approaching, ICE hasn’t produced a single document — leaving Americans in the dark amid fears that President Donald Trump may heed the calls of prominent MAGA figures and station ICE agents or National Guard personnel at voting sites, a move clearly meant to intimidate voters and poll workers and influence election outcomes.

The White House and senior Trump officials have refused to rule out the tactic, while senior Department of Justice officials — including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — have endorsed it even though federal law largely bars the deployment of law enforcement to polling places.

ICE’s disclosure marks a significant reversal. The agency told U.S. District Judge Beryl Alaine Howell earlier this year that it “found no responsive records” to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents on the “potential employment of federal agents and troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices.”

The volte-face came after the DNC pointed out that recent alarming actions by ICE agents in or around voting sites must have generated documents pertinent to its FOIA request.

The incidents highlighted by the DNC included two ICE agents confronting a poll worker at a voting site in Syracuse, New York, as she was helping carry out the state’s recent primary elections last month.

In a docket entry Monday, Howell, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, said ICE had identified at least 11,103 potentially responsive pages. In addition, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which previously told Howell that it did not have a set timeline on when its search for responsive documents would be completed, found approximately 116,779 pertinent records, the judge said.

Under FOIA, government agencies are required to inform the requester if no responsive files exist or if the documents are exempted under the law from being revealed, such as those related to ongoing criminal investigations.

Howell noted that even though several agencies identified thousands of potential documents responsive to the DNC’s request, “not a single page of responsive materials has yet been produced, with less than four months before the 2026 midterm elections.”