Judge Howell Calls ICE's June 2027 FOIA Timeline 'an Unacceptable Delay' in DNC Polling-Place Case

On August 22, 2026, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a minute order in the DNC’s FOIA suit over the deployment of military and law-enforcement personnel to polling places, drop boxes and election offices that ICE’s projection that “initial processing will be complete by approximately June 2027” was “an unacceptable delay given the proximity of the 2026 midterm elections,” a schedule that would have finished production roughly seven months after the election. She directed the Defense Department’s Office of the Secretary of Defense/Joint Staff to complete supplemental searches and begin processing by August 28, DHS headquarters to send the DNC a list of custodians by August 25, and the parties to give estimates of pages remaining and completion dates in their September 4 joint status report. The 1,000-pages-per-month processing requirement was set earlier, by Howell’s July 13 minute order, not on August 22.

The production record is the sharpest fact in the case. ICE reported 11,103 potentially responsive pages in July; the August 21 joint status report put about 10,698 pages still remaining, and ICE’s first production on August 7 was 576 pages of what the DNC calls unannotated press clippings rather than the underlying records. The DNC filed the suit on March 10, 2026 against DOJ, DHS and DOD. The case sits downstream of Todd Blanche’s March CPAC remark and July 15 refusal to rule out federal agents at polling places (2026-07-15–dag-blanche-endorses-ice-agents-polling-places-2026-midterms); this order is the discovery fight over what federal agencies have actually planned.