FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees will not monitor voting locations during the upcoming midterm elections, although other law enforcement agents will, a government official said in a court filing on Oct. 28.
“There will be no Federal Bureau of Investigation or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, much less agents, serving as monitors,” the Department of Justice official said in the document, which was filed with the federal court in the District of Columbia.
The official, Eric Neff, acting chief of the Voting Section in the department’s Civil Rights Division, said he was aware of only one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employee participating in the division’s poll-monitoring effort. That employee, from Customs and Border Protection, is serving on behalf of the division, not as a DHS representative, according to Neff.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
The Department of Justice confirmed earlier Wednesday that it plans to send 1,000 workers to monitor polls across all 50 states.
“Every monitor will merely observe and report any potential violations of federal law to the Department, which will be reviewed after Election Day,” a spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email.
The spokeswoman declined to say who would serve as monitors or where exactly they would be deployed.
Neff said monitors would include employees from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Those employees will be prohibited from carrying guns and barred from taking any action beyond normal Civil Division monitoring conduct, such as observing polling locations and taking notes, according to Neff.
“Thus, while monitoring, the monitors will not be acting as ‘law enforcement personnel,’ a ‘law enforcement officer,’ or a ‘law enforcement agent’ as commonly understood,” he wrote, adding that monitors have been trained not to interfere with voting or election officials and to only speak to voters after they have cast ballots.
For years, the Department of Justice has deployed monitors to polling sites for both federal and non-federal elections to watch for violations of federal laws, such as the Voting Rights Act. Federal law says the monitors “shall investigate and report to the Attorney General.”
The department usually gives jurisdictions advance notice before sending monitors, according to nonprofit organization Campaign Legal Center. The center said monitors should not identify themselves to voters and election officials as federal agents, prosecutors, or anything other than Department of Justice employees or monitors, because doing so could intimidate voters in violation of federal law.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said this week that New Yorkers should not fear federal workers at polling locations.
“Armed federal agents are not allowed at polling places, and no one can use a badge, a weapon, or a threat to stop you from voting,” she said. “Voting in New York is safe, and my office will make sure every eligible voter can cast their ballot and be heard.”
The Department of Justice has declined to publicly release locations employees will monitor on Nov. 3.
Neff said in the new filing that the division is still identifying all locations it will send monitors to. He also said that releasing a full list of locations, as sought by a Freedom of Information Act request, would undermine the division’s monitoring operation and potentially put monitors at risk.
Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
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