Virginia Is Taking Action to Keep ICE Agents Away from Polling Places Before the Midterms

A persistent fear tied to the upcoming November midterm elections, particularly as President Donald Trump’s approval rating explores historic lows and the Democratic polling lead in the generic congressional ballot slowly creeps up, is that an increasingly desperate GOP will engage in every possible piece of voter intimidation to keep Americans from casting ballots. Notably, this could include the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal agents to polling places in blue-leaning cities in particular, as a way of intimidating some voters from participating in the process. We already have concrete data illustrating something relevant to this effect, from another industry entirely: American sales of Mexican lager beer sharply dipped across 2025 during the nationwide deployment of ICE deportation campaigns, reversing a long trend of growth as immigrant consumers increasingly reported themselves staying home to avoid encountering ICE, doing less shopping in the process. Prominent Democrats, not to mention people who give a shit about, you know, democracy, naturally fear that ICE could have a similar chilling effect during elections if they’re suddenly showing up at our around polling places.

Thankfully, some blue states and individual cities are already beginning efforts to mobilize and plan for this potential outcome, in order to safeguard their elections against concerted federal interference by government agents, whether or not those agents are specifically related to immigration or ICE. One of those states will be right in D.C.’s backyard, with Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger revealing in a speaking engagement on Tuesday that she intends to sign a Wednesday executive order designed specifically to equip election workers and polling place volunteers with tools and a clear playbook for how to respond if federal agents show up at their polling places. There’s not much detail here yet, but the order would presumably codify protocol for how to call upon local law enforcement to remove federal agents who are “principally there to intimidate or scare people.”

“Throughout history, we have seen efforts at intimidating voters,” said Spanberger, speaking at a conference hosted by the Center for American Progress. “My worry is that we will continue to see those heightened. The reality is that the challenges and the fear that people might have when going to the polling place is real.”

Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger says that she plans to issue an executive order to help election workers respond if federal agents show up at polling sites in Virginia.

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— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 5:00 PM · May 19, 2026

The Republican response will no doubt be to either claim that safeguards against ICE agents at polling places are either unnecessary, because they won’t be present, or illegal because of the boundless powers conveyed on federal agents to generally run roughshod over anyone they encounter. For what it’s worth, federal law expressly bars the stationing of law enforcement officers or members of the military at polling places.

It’s impossible to concisely state the federal government’s position on the matter, though, because it has been entirely inconsistent and contradictory in the buildup to the midterms. Government officials on lower rungs of the Trump administration have largely attempted to turn down the heat, offering bland assurances that ICE agents won’t be deployed to polling places in a mass voter suppression campaign. In February, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in the midst of a public phone call with election integrity officials at DHS, asked for assurance point blank that ICE would not be deployed. Heather Honey, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity at DHS, said the following: “Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation. There will be no ICE presence at polling locations.”

Honey might want to confer with the President on such a proclamation, because Trump, contradicting his underlings as always, has repeatedly refused to say that federal agents wouldn’t storm polling places on election day. Just this week, when asked by PBS Newshour whether he would send the National Guard or ICE agents to polling places in November for the midterms, Trump replied that “I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections. We have to have honest elections.” Isn’t it weird how exclusively blue states and blue cities have any issues with “honest elections”? It’s probably just coincidence that these quotes are coming from the same guy who was claiming earlier this year, in defiance of literally everything about voting in the Constitution, that the federal government needed to “nationalize voting” and fully seize control of elections, completing our descent into a totalitarian non-democracy. This is what makes the protestations of someone like Honey so frustrating: Oh, you can’t imagine where people are getting these crazy ideas about armed agents being present on election day? Have you listened to The President of the United States of America, your boss, speak on the subject?

The wider galaxy of MAGA thought leaders has certainly been attempting to push Trump in that direction, toward outright and open voter intimidation through the deployment of his own personal ICE gestapo. Longtime Trump strategist and MAGA figurehead Steve Bannon said that the President was using the presence of ICE agents at airports during the DHS shutdown as a “test run” for eventually deploying them to polling places, and has urged Trump to do exactly that. On his War Room podcast, Bannon said the following: “We can use this as a test run, as a test case, to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterms.”

NEWS — Local prosecutors warn Trump: “If you send ICE to the polls, we’ll put them in jail.”

District attorneys across the U.S. announced today that they’ll charge federal agents sent to conduct voter intimidation.

“We’ll lock their asses up,” vowed Philly DA Larry Krasner.

— Miles Taylor (@milestaylor.bsky.social) 9:35 AM · May 19, 2026

Virginia, thankfully, is not the only state or threatened area (primarily blue cities) which has been taking notice of these threats to completely upend state elections–again, not a thing that the federal government has any legal power to actually do. A coalition of 10 district attorneys, including those who represent cities such as Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Dallas likewise banded together this week to assert that they won’t hesitate to investigate and prosecute incidents of suspected voter intimidation that may be committed by federal agents during the midterm elections. They include the likes of Hennepin County, Minnesota’s Mary Moriarty, who became the first prosecutor in the country to level felony charges against an agent of ICE. All told, district attorneys in Texas, Pennsylvania, Minneapolis, Virginia and Arizona signed on to the announcement.

“A federal badge is not a license to violate the Constitution, and it is not a shield from state criminal law,” said Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner. “We will prosecute ICE agents who break the law. There is no category of American who gets to operate above it.”