SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Will federal agents be at the polls on Election Day?
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TODD BLANCHE: Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places? Illegals can't vote.
DETROW: That was U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaking at the conservative political gathering CPAC back in March. Now, since then, the Department of Homeland Security has said that they do not plan on sending agents to patrol the polls, but that has not stopped election officials and activists from worrying and from planning. One of them is Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. He joins us now. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
STEVE SIMON: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: You have said this is the top question you are getting from people in Minnesota - is ICE going to be at the polling places? What have you been saying to that question?
SIMON: Well, what I tell people is two things, principally. No. 1, we have really good laws in Minnesota, and federal laws as well, that will be enforced and that would make it very difficult for federal law enforcement, whether it's ICE or Border Patrol or anyone else, to invade the sanctity of a polling place on Election Day.
DETROW: Who enforces those laws, though? I'm sorry, 'cause that's the thing that I think people are trying to grapple with what that looks like. Is that state police? Is that local police? What does...
SIMON: Right.
DETROW: ...That look like?
SIMON: It really is at the local level. You know, our office, we don't have guns and badges, but we work with people who do - counties, cities and towns - and they have the legal authority to enforce these laws. So we have been in touch in our office over a number of months with sheriffs, with police chiefs, with county attorneys or prosecutors, just to remind them, to make them aware again of these laws that they can enforce.
DETROW: The thing I'm thinking about, though, is, like, I understand you have a plan, but I'm also thinking about the scenario where a local sheriff is...
SIMON: Right.
DETROW: ...In a confrontation with an ICE officer at a polling place. That could get very bad very fast in its own way.
SIMON: It could. You're right. Local law enforcement is going to have to make some judgment calls. And let me give you a particular example that has come up in my conversations. There are some local governments that tell me that they feel very comfortable, based on just what the law says, the words on the page, that if there were some sort of infraction or incursion into a polling place, that they would feel comfortable enforcing the law, like literally physically enforcing the law. There are others who have hinted that they would feel far more comfortable if they got a court order. It really depends on the appetite for risk, I suppose, on the part of local governments.
DETROW: I want to play a clip from the secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin. This is at a press conference addressing this basic question we are talking about today, whether ICE could be sent to the polls.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: The only reason why we would be at polling places if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.
DETROW: Steve Simon, does that statement make you feel better or make you feel more anxious?
SIMON: Well, he's been quite literal there when he talks about in a polling place. When I think about the election environment on Election Day, I'm talking about a whole scene, right? Whether or not they're tracking a particular person down who they believe has broken the law, that's one thing. But if you have federal law enforcement aimlessly hovering, loitering, casing a polling place or even the neighborhood around that polling place, that can create a problem for voters. So, you know, he's talking about something very specific. I'm talking about making sure that our polling places and the whole election environment are islands of calm. That's what we want.
DETROW: To that point, to islands of calm, when Minneapolis and Saint Paul were at the center of all of this ICE activity, there was violence. There was unrest. There was a lot of civic pushback. The DIY activism and organizing of people in the Twin Cities was such a big part of that story and has been praised by so many quarters. What do you tell people who would be thinking about doing their own organizing, to keep tabs on polling places, to keep tabs on possible ICE activity? Is that helpful? Is that not helpful when you're talking about islands of calm?
SIMON: I think it's OK and understandable to organize the capacity to send people to polling places, to sign people up, to assign them to precincts, to be ready to deploy them if there's an incident. However, and importantly, our advice is that people should think twice about whether to actually deploy them, because in the absence of hard evidence that there's an incident or an episode or something that needs responding to, simply preemptively putting out members of the community to stand guard or protect polling places risks a boomerang effect. Because a typical voter might stroll up to the polling place, and if they see five people on the same colored T-shirt or the same colored vest, they don't know if that's the good guys or the bad guys in their mind, and it could lead to more of a tinderbox situation. So our advice is, please be very careful, very cautious about actually sending people there in the absence of hard evidence.
DETROW: That is Minnesota's secretary of state, Steve Simon. Thank you so much for talking to us.
SIMON: Thank you.
DETROW: And we reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment. A spokesperson wrote the following statement, quote, "ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations. If called upon, agents would be able to rapidly respond to an incident if necessary to assist local law enforcement," endquote.
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