SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Nationwide, local election officials are reassuring voters that Election Day on Tuesday will go smoothly. And the Trump administration has said it has no plans to deploy immigration agents or troops to polling sites, which federal law prohibits. Still, immigration advocates and groups of retired national security leaders are helping local officials prepare. NPR correspondents Kat Lonsdorf and Sergio Martínez-Beltrán are here to talk about all of this for this week's immigration briefing. Let me say welcome to you both.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: Hey.
SIMON: Kat, first you. How worried are some security and election officials about what could happen next Tuesday?
LONSDORF: Well, anxieties around President Trump potentially deploying the military and/or federal immigration officers to the polls have been growing for months now. I think Sergio will agree that we've both been hearing these concerns from the general public and various local officials for a while. To be clear, something like that would shatter so many norms and is the worst-case scenario. Still, this administration is unpredictable and has bucked democratic norms repeatedly. We've been reporting about how immigration enforcement continues at an aggressive pace. And just a reminder - there are National Guard still deployed in some American cities. I see them here in D.C. all the time.
Here's how Zack West put it. He's national security counsel at Protect Democracy and a former military lawyer.
ZACK WEST: The past two years have been very humbling in terms of what anyone thinks they know about this administration. So I feel like the best move is to be ready and just hope that it doesn't happen.
LONSDORF: Basically, just because people are preparing for the scenario, it doesn't mean it will happen.
SIMON: As we've noted, federal law prohibits armed federal agents or military troops from going to or being at voting sites. What does the administration say about those possible scenarios?
LONSDORF: Well, part of what's driving all of this anxiety is that there hasn't been clear messaging from the administration. Just a few days ago, President Trump was asked by a reporter if troops should be at polling places. And he sidestepped the question, which he's done before. Here's how he responded.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, you have to make sure you have honest elections.
LONSDORF: That's as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine has said there are, quote, "no plans to send troops to polls."
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: And, Scott, DHS says they only do targeted operations - something that is not always true. But they told us in a statement that if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement. And when I asked DHS to respond to their concerns, they referred me to these comments Secretary Markwayne Mullin made during his confirmation hearing back in March.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: I don't understand what the concern about enforcing immigration at polling places is anyways because honestly, if you're not a citizen, you shouldn't be voting anyway. So technically, there shouldn't be any illegals at the polling spot.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: But that's also not completely true. It's important to note that in a few states, noncitizens can vote in some local elections, and they could be scared to go vote. But a bigger concern is the intimidating effect on people...
LONSDORF: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: ...Citizens and noncitizens alike. You know, hundreds of local law enforcement agencies are in partnerships with the federal government to assist with Trump's immigration crackdown. So advocates on the ground are telling me that you don't need an ICE officer or a Border Patrol agent at the poll to spook people. Having a local police officer who worked with the feds in neighborhoods around voting sites could be intimidating.
SIMON: Sergio, the president's immigration sweeps have been going on for nearly two years. Why do advocates worry that Tuesday might be especially tense?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Advocates warn that even though it's illegal to station armed federal agents at the polls, the Trump administration has disregarded the law when it comes to immigration. That's what Lauren Bonds told me. She's the executive director of the advocacy group National Police Accountability Project.
LAUREN BONDS: Election workers and the state agencies that are responsible for running elections need to be very prepared for what to do if there is a federal law enforcement presence at the polls.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: There's one group in Phoenix called Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, that used data compiled from the weeks leading up to the July primaries to map where the community was seeing ICE agents. Karime Rodriguez, one of LUCHA's organizers, says that data shows that a lot of the arrests happened near polling sites.
KARIME RODRIGUEZ: It's not a coincidence because polling places are churches and schools and community centers. So we knew that we - if we wanted to respond to threats on the day of, we needed people on the ground to help us.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Her group has trained over a hundred observers to do just that - you know, stand outside polling sites to monitor and report whether federal law enforcement agents are deployed there.
SIMON: Kat, tens of millions of ballots have already been cast. Early voting seems to be trending higher than the last midterms. Has all the preparation at state and local levels reassured voters and election experts?
LONSDORF: I mean, a lot of the organizations that I've been talking to said they feel hopeful that all this preparation is helping to reassure voters that election officials are ready for Election Day. And like you said, Scott, early voting is underway in many places, so they're encouraging voters to vote early if they're worried.
I talked to Justin Levitt. He's a law professor and voting law expert at Loyola Marymount University. He told me that he thinks it's in part because there's been all this preparation. It will be a, quote, "delightfully, relentlessly normal Election Day." But still, he acknowledged that the high levels of anxiety around ICE or military at the polls might have some impact.
JUSTIN LEVITT: I do think - not least in part because of this electric anxiety - that there will be a viral video clip on Election Day of ICE at the polls or the military at the polls. It may or may not be real. It might have no relationship whatsoever to reality on the ground.
LONSDORF: He urged people to really pause if they see something like that and go check with a trusted source or just go look outside.
SIMON: NPR's Kat Lonsdorf and Sergio Martínez-Beltrán. Thanks to both you.
LONSDORF: You're welcome.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: You're welcome.
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SIMON: And NPR is tracking the issues that matter to voters in this midterm election. You can find all of our coverage in one place on the NPR app. You can download it today by going to npr.org/2026election.
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