ICE Is In Airports. Dem Secs of State Are Worried About the Midterms

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise. 

Buckle up: there is a lot to unpack this week. 

We’re going to be looking at the rumors — stoked by Trump-aligned figures — surrounding the possibility that the president would order Immigration and Customs Enforcement to polling places this fall, updates in the DOGE voter sharing agreement saga (spoiler alert: we still don’t have a ton of answers on this one), Chip Roy admitting the SAVE Act actually will impact women voters, and, of course, updates in the never-ending redistricting battle that Trump started almost a year ago. 

Let’s dig in.  

Will Trump Send ICE to the Polls? 

Amid conflicting, generally confusing and outright evasive statements from the Trump administration on the matter, Democratic secretaries of state are demanding that the administration explicitly say that it will ban ICE agents from polling places.

Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official at the helm of the department’s supposed election integrity efforts, reportedly said in a private call last month that ICE agents would not be present at polling places.

“Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation,” she said, per reporting from NPR. “There will be no ICE presence at polling locations.”

But no one in the Trump administration has given such a direct answer to the question in a public forum. This month, recently confirmed DHS Secretary Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said that he may install ICE agents at polling places to address a “specific threat,” but not for “intimidation.” Both fired-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons have given similarly squishy answers on the matter when pressed publicly, as well. 

Trump’s allies in the online, far-right fever swamps, meanwhile, have been chomping at the bit to get Trump to send in ICE in November. In an episode of his podcast on Monday, Steve Bannon, who has been leading the charge on this, said that ICE agents at airports could function as a “test run” for ICE activity at polling places. 

“We can use this as a test run, as a test case, to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterms,” he said. 

“They’re trained to, wait for it, check IDs,” he added. “That’s why it’s perfect training for the fall of 2026. This is why it’s such a brilliant — this is another 5D chess move from President Trump.”

It’s all become a big enough concern that Democratic secretaries of state are sounding the alarm about it. In a letter earlier this month, nine secretaries of state asked Mullin to simply confirm in writing that ICE agents will not be deployed to polling places. (Seems like a very reasonable ask!)

“As our states’ Chief Election Officials, we ask you to confirm in writing that it is or will be the policy of the Department of Homeland Security that ICE and other immigration enforcement personnel will not have a presence at voting and election administration locations during the 2026 elections,” the letter says. 

“We have heard concerns from many of our constituents about potential voter intimidation that would arise from an armed law enforcement presence at polling locations,” the letter continues. “As such, we believe it is in the public interest to have a clear understanding of this policy from your office.”

Not only would ICE agents at polling places be, obviously, intimidating for voters, it’s also yet another way for the administration to perpetuate the myth that non-citizens are voting in our elections. For the thousandth time, they are not. 

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan elevated the conspiracy theory again just this week when he refused to answer questions about whether the administration wants to flood polling places with ICE agents and instead asked, “are illegal aliens voting?”

Voting Advocates Sue Over Mysterious and Very Bad Seeming DOGE Voter Data Agreement

We have an update in the very bizarre story of how some of Elon Musk’s DOGE staffers seemingly worked with an advocacy group in some sort of lawless voter data sharing pact. 

First a little refresher. 

The Justice Department conceded in a January court filing that in March 2025, two members of the DOGE team who were working at the Social Security Administration were in contact with an “advocacy group” (an election-denying organization, perhaps?) with the goal of finding “evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.”

The DOJ never named the “advocacy group” in question, but noted that one of the workers signed a “voter data agreement” with the group.

On Monday, Democracy Forward, a national legal organization that focuses its work, in part, on voting rights, filed a lawsuit to force the Social Security Administration to release the public records pertaining to this apparent voter data sharing pact. 

“SSA’s acknowledgments left numerous open questions about the conduct of DOGE affiliates at SSA, how the agency discovered these improper actions, and what other harm DOGE affiliates may have caused,” the lawsuit argues. “The concerns raised by SSA’s incomplete disclosures raise urgent questions about improper conduct at the agency that may affect the integrity of upcoming elections through the unlawful disclosure of protected personal information to outside entities and other unlawful, political conduct by SSA employees.”

“The Trump-Vance administration continues to hide what it is doing with Americans’ personal data, who it has unlawfully shared it with, and why. The stewardship over the personal data of people in America is one of the most important obligations of our government – and they are failing,” President and CEO of Democracy Forward Skye Perryman, said in a statement.

The Social Security Administration did not respond to TPM’s request for comment. 

Chip Roy Admits SAVE America Act Would Hurt Women

In a new leaked audio recording from February 2025, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who is the lead sponsor of the SAVE America Act in the House, admitted that the proposal will make it harder for married women, who have changed their last names, to vote.

​​As a reminder, the SAVE America Act is a sweeping voter suppression bill that has passed the House and is sitting in the Senate — with no clear path to passage, at least at the moment — that mandates, among other things, documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. If the legislation somehow becomes law, as Trump, his allies and many Republican lawmakers are pushing for, it will disenfranchise millions of voters who do not have documentary proof of citizenship readily available. The proposal, as Roy himself has now admitted, will also impact married women who have changed their last names and do not have up-to-date photo IDs.

In the recording, Roy acknowledged that people have claimed that the SAVE America Act will present barriers for married women, but those critics are just people trying to “stir the pot,” he said. 

“Although, frankly, I’m trying not to elevate the issue too much,” he said.

He then went on to describe the issues his chief of staff had when trying to get a new ID card in Virginia after the Real ID requirements kicked in. 

“..she had to go through a bunch of hoops. She’s gonna have to go back to the DMV twice because they want the paperwork,” Roy said. “That’s just part of the issue with how we try to set up the ability to identify people.”

These admissions about the difficulties of complying with the new federal regulations on the Real ID requirements for travel illustrate the exact concerns that voting rights advocates and Democrats have been elevating in their opposition to the SAVE America Act for some time now. While mandating documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo IDs for voting may help weed out all of the non-citizens who are supposedly clamoring to risk their immigration status in order to vote (something that is only happening in Trump Republicans’ imaginations), it will also disenfranchise the many eligible voters who either don’t have access to their citizenship materials or don’t have an updated ID.

The remarks are also a pretty stunning contradiction of later statements Roy made publicly about how the SAVE Act definitely won’t impact women. Let’s fast forward to April 2025, for example, when Roy released the following statement, disregarding this (very real) concern. 

“Perhaps the most absurd narrative peddled from the left, including twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is that the SAVE Act will somehow disenfranchise married women, or anyone else who has changed his or her name, from voting in federal elections,” Roy said. 

“Nothing could be further from the truth. The SAVE Act secures all Americans’ votes by ensuring non-citizens do not vote in federal elections, effectively canceling out the votes of citizens, including married women,” he added. 

Around the States: The Latest in Redistricting News

Missouri

In a win for Republicans on Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the state’s Republican-favoring congressional maps, ruling that there is no clause in the Missouri Constitution that explicitly prohibits the legislature’s right to draw new congressional lines mid-decade. 

Democrats are still trying to block the new maps, by forcing a referendum on the matter. 

In Other Election News

Los Angeles Times: More than half a million ballots seized by top GOP candidate in California governor’s race

AJC: Skeptics Said 2020 Election Boxes Were Missing. They never asked Fulton.

Arizona Mirror:DOJ subpoena reveals federal investigators sought virtually all records from Arizona’s 2020 audit