At the Border Security Expo, President Trump’s acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked about his past support for sending armed federal officers (Border Patrol and/or ICE) to voting locations. He was asked, “How do you reconcile that with obviously the federal law that prohibits federal law enforcement to be armed at these locations?”
Blanche denied that he expressed such support and said, “That’s not true, I have not said that. What we’ve talked about is a need to make sure that our elections are fair. That only people who are supposed to be voting are voting.”
[NOTE: President Trump and members of his administration have repeatedly suggested that noncitizens are trying to vote in federal elections, which is against federal law.]
Blanche added, “I’m not sure of the uproar, or the risk of having a Border Patrol or an ICE agent at a polling location or looking into if somebody is voting who shouldn’t be.” He repeated, “If you are here illegally, you cannot vote. And so what’s the risk? Why wouldn’t everyone in Washington, everyone in the United States be supportive of that?”
Uhm, maybe because it’s illegal?
Federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 592 prohibits deploying “troops or armed men” to locations where elections are held, to prevent interference or intimidation.
You’d think an acting Attorney General would know this. https://t.co/bN88HIvejM
— John Collins (@Logically_JC) May 7, 2026
Critics of the Trump administration, including political pundit John Collins, are berating Blanche with comments including, “Uhm, maybe because it’s illegal? Federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 592 prohibits deploying ‘troops or armed men’ to locations where elections are held, to prevent interference or intimidation. You’d think an acting Attorney General would know this.”
[Note: In February at a congressional hearing, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem told Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) that the government has “no plans” to send CBP or ICE officers to polling locations.]
COONS: Will you rule out the deployment of ICE or CBP to polling places?
NOEM: There are no plans to have ICE officers at our polling locations
COONS: Would you rule it out?
NOEM: Do you plan on illegal aliens voting?
COONS: I do not
NOEM: Then there should be no need… pic.twitter.com/Qa15GtBMYA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2026
Coons replied, “I’m happy to hear it,” and noted that the conservative group Heritage Foundation “recently concluded that over a 20-year period where they reviewed hundred of millions and billions of voting cases, they found only a small handful of actual cases of illegals voting.”
When Coons asked Noem if she would “issue a directive that CPB and ICE should be nowhere near polling places this November,” Noem repeated, “We have no plans to send law enforcement at polling locations.”
The new DHS head, Markwayne Mullin, said at his confirmation hearing in March that he wouldn’t rule out sending federal law enforcement to voting places if there was “an active threat.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) responded to Mullin’s response by noting the pattern of Trump nominees who have made promises at confirmation hearings and then once they became a member of the cabinet, “do the exact opposite.”