<\/p>\n
ICE watchers across<\/span> the country who watched federal agents shoot people in the streets and fought to drive ICE from their cities are turning their new skills against the next authoritarian threat from the Trump administration: election interference.<\/p>\n Volunteers who showed up a few months ago asking, \u201cWhere do I buy a whistle?\u201d are now trained and committed members of an \u201cICE Watch\u201d movement, said Zach Mueller, whose anti-authoritarian group States at the Core started hosting trainings<\/a> earlier this year.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re not in the normal cast of characters that have been showing up to rallies over the last several decades,\u201d said Mueller. Now, they\u2019re planning to fan out to their local polling places and defend their neighbors\u2019 rights to vote.<\/p>\n The ICE-watchers-turned-poll-watchers are preparing for the worst despite a temporary win the voting rights movement secured last week, when the Supreme Court upheld<\/a> a decision to block a Trump administration rule that would have let the U.S. Postal Service refuse to deliver ballots from states that don\u2019t share their voter rolls with the federal government, among other new constraints, which advocates warned would lead to chaos and uncounted votes. While that plan was foiled for the midterms, other electoral threats abound.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are 100 different scenarios that you can run through,\u201d said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible. \u201cCould be ICE at the polls, could be Trump getting every Republican to swear to sabotage the results \u2026 Could be something after the fact, seizing ballot boxes or refusing to acknowledge the results. Who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n What is clear, Levin said, is, \u201cIf you think that some Democratic politician is going to have some neat trick in the back pocket that they going to pull when it happens, you\u2019ve got another thing coming.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal interference at the polls is illegal. Despite lawsuits seeking to block federal immigration officers from poll sites, administration officials have continued to threaten their presence anyway. Earlier this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said<\/a> that immigration agents could be deployed at polling places if there is a \u201cthreat\u201d or if they\u2019re serving a warrant. And President Donald Trump has previously said that federal agents and the National Guard<\/a> could be sent to polling locations.<\/p>\n Levin\u2019s organization, which co-sponsors the No Kings protests<\/a>, has launched \u201celection protection\u201d training programs to help people prepare to mobilize for different election sabotage scenarios, including federal immigration agents at the polls, and Mueller\u2019s group has expanded its trainings to include election protection trainings known as \u201cBeyond ICE Watch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately this is going to come down to: Do you have a sufficient number of people organized and prepared to push back when shit hits the fan, or don\u2019t you?\u201d said Levin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing that has changed anything over the last 22 months has been normal, everyday people deciding they weren\u2019t going to put up with this shit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n In the past two years, Levin said, an elite class composed of \u201cmedia and business and law firms and universities\u201d and parts of the Democratic establishment, including<\/a> Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,\u00a0D-N.Y., have capitulated<\/a> to the authoritarian whims<\/a> of the Trump administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing that has changed anything over the last 22 months has been normal, everyday people deciding they weren\u2019t going to put up with this shit,\u201d said Levin. \u201cThey organized, they reached out, they formed communities, and they pushed back.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Last year,<\/span> the Save America Movement, a nonprofit political and pro-democracy organization that rose up in opposition to Trump, launched \u201cliberty vans\u201d in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The vehicles are staffed with organizers trained in documenting and deescalating violence from federal law enforcement agents. \u201cOur perspective was that if everybody in America knew what it felt like to be in Los Angeles<\/a> during that summer, nobody would be OK with this,\u201d said Mary Corcoran, who serves as the group\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n The project later expanded to other cities including Chicago, Charlotte, and Minneapolis.<\/p>\n \u201cICE is a new X factor in this election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Now, Corcoran plans to deploy a similar strategy in battleground states. The group is working with major civil and labor rights figures like Rev. Al Sharpton and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten to send volunteers \u2014 including trusted community leaders like clergy members \u2014 trained in deescalation, documentation, and local voting laws to precincts with large Black, Latino, and Asian populations in North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and Michigan.<\/p>\n Corcoran said the precincts they chose are all electoral power centers with large minority and immigrant populations. \u201cIf they were successful in intimidating even 10 percent of those voters from coming back this midterm cycle, it could easily swing the outcome statewide,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Corcoran is hopeful that people knowing they will not be alone at the polls will help them feel safer, but she acknowledges that this election cycle will be a new test. \u201cVoter intimidation has always been around,\u201d she said. \u201cBut ICE is a new X factor in this election.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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