A senior Department of Homeland Security official said on a call with state election officials Wednesday that immigration agents will not show up at polling places this year, according to three call participants.
“Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation. There will be no ICE presence at polling locations,” said Heather Honey, a deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, according to one individual who participated in the call and requested anonymity to speak candidly and share quotes. Two other participants on the call confirmed the comments.
Honey, a conservative activist who was involved in the 2020 election denial movement before being appointed to a role in the Trump administration, made the remark after California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, asked if states would be alerted to immigration operations at polling sites.
Federal law makes it illegal to deploy “troops or armed men” to a polling site, but some election officials have raised concerns that President Donald Trump's immigration operations could affect the upcoming midterms.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said that that he wasn't swayed by Honey's assurances.
“Heather Honey is an election denier with zero integrity. The fact that she’s speaking for the Department of Homeland Security is an embarrassment to election administrators who recognize her past work with the Cyber Ninja audit and all that nonsense,” he said. "I’m just not convinced.”
Honey was a subcontractor for Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate to investigate the 2020 election in Maricopa County. The investigation, which did not prove any fraud, was rooted in conspiracy theories and misunderstandings about the process, according to experts who monitored their review.
Members of the FBI, the Election Assistance Commission, the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Postal Service and the Department of Justice were present on Wednesday's call with state election officials around the country. The FBI had scheduled the call earlier this month to discuss “preparations” for the midterm elections.
The call came in the wake of Trump saying that Republicans should "nationalize" voting in at least some paces, even though the U.S. Constitution grants states the authority to administer elections.
“I did not walk away from this meeting reassured that the federal government wouldn’t try to interfere in state sovereignty over the election," said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat.
Some state election officials said the invitation was also the first time they have heard from anyone in the second Trump administration about election security in months, or ever.
Three participants interviewed by NBC News said the administration officials offered little in the way of new information and dodged state officials' specific questions.
“When we asked about state sovereignty and could the federal government make public statements reinforcing the constitutional principle that the states, not the federal government, were in charge of elections, there was a stunned silence," Bellows told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
Fontes also noted the silence, saying it "does not speak well to this administration’s attitude towards the federalization of American elections."
