Kristi Noem won’t rule out deploying ICE to polls: intimidation? 

Here’s what’s happening: As we head toward the 2026 midterms, some Democratic lawmakers are moving to block federal agents, specifically ICE, from being deployed at polling stations. They say the mere presence of immigration enforcement near voting sites could intimidate voters. The Department of Homeland Security insists there are no plans to station ICE agents at the polls. But the fact that this even has to be clarified tells you something about the political climate we’re in.  

Maryland Congresswoman April McClain Delaney is preparing to introduce the Democracy Without Intimidation Act. Federal law already bars the military from polling places and makes voter intimidation a crime. What it doesn’t explicitly do is prohibit civilian federal agencies like ICE from showing up.  

This bill would close that loophole, making it a crime for senior federal law enforcement officials to deploy officers to polling locations. It would also restrict immigration enforcement in the four weeks leading up to a federal election, unless there’s individualized probable cause or an imminent threat.  

This push didn’t come out of nowhere. Remember when former White House adviser Steve Bannon had this to say a few weeks ago? “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again.”  

And then there’s President Trump on “The Dan Bongino Show”: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”  

Those comments followed repeated claims from Trump that non-citizen voting is widespread, claims he’s made since 2016, when he said millions of “illegal votes” cost him the popular vote, and again after 2020, when he alleged tens of thousands of non-citizen ballots swung key states.  

But here’s what the data actually shows:  

Illegal voting by noncitizens is already against the law. It is investigated. It is prosecuted. And there is no credible evidence that it has ever occurred at a scale large enough to impact any federal election. According to a Bipartisan Policy Center analysis, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Cases database found just 77 instances of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023. That’s a 24-year span. Seventy-seven cases over more than two decades, out of billions of ballots cast.   

On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Coons pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Noem said there are “no plans” to have ICE agents at polling sites, but she stopped short of ruling it out entirely. Why not?  

On one hand, election integrity matters. On the other, so does voter access and perception. Because democracy doesn’t just rely on secure systems. It relies on public confidence. When political leaders talk about “surrounding” polls with immigration agents, even hypothetically, it raises a real question: who feels safe showing up?  

If there’s no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting, then deploying or even threatening to deploy federal immigration agents near ballot boxes isn’t about security. It shifts the focus away from facts and toward fear.  

If the goal is confidence in the system, then the approach has to be grounded in evidence, not rhetoric.  

Lindsey Granger is a NewsNation contributor and co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising.” This column is an edited transcription of her on-air commentary.   

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