LULAC, UnidosUS, Common Cause and Denver Sue DHS Over Armed ICE Officers at Polling Places

The League of United Latin American Citizens, UnidosUS, Common Cause and the City and County of Denver filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on September 10, 2026, seeking to block armed ICE officers from entering polling places during the November 3 midterms. Defendants are DHS, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, ICE, and ICE acting Director David Venturella. Democracy Forward is counsel.

The policy at issue is not inferred. On September 1, Mullin confirmed that ICE officers may enter polling locations to serve warrants or conduct immigration and customs enforcement activity.

The statute the complaint invokes reads like it was drafted for this. 18 U.S.C. § 592 was adopted in its current form in 1948, codifying a prohibition with Reconstruction-era roots. It provides:

“Whoever, being an officer of the Army or Navy, or other person in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both; and be disqualified from holding any office of honor, profit, or trust under the United States.”

Three features of that text matter here. It reaches any “person in the civil… service of the United States,” not only the military. It requires no proof that anyone was intimidated — the offense is bringing armed men to the place where an election is held. And its penalty includes disqualification from holding any federal office of honor, profit, or trust, which is an unusual remedy to find attached to a criminal statute and one that operates on the official rather than the policy.

The statute carries a second sentence the complaint will have to work around: it “shall not prevent any officer or member of the armed forces of the United States from exercising the right of suffrage in any election district to which he may belong.” That preserves a servicemember’s own right to vote; it does not on its face authorize an armed federal officer to be present in an enforcement capacity, which is the distinction the case will turn on.

This is the third documented step in a sequence this timeline has tracked since July. Deputy AG Todd Blanche endorsed deploying ICE to polling places at CPAC on July 15 and declined to promise compliance with anti-intimidation law. Judge Howell ordered ICE on August 22 to process 1,000 pages a month of FOIA records on polling-place deployment, after ICE had reversed an earlier denial. Mullin then made the policy explicit on September 1, and the suit followed nine days later.

Set beside the rest of the eight-week window — the HSI voter-fraud surge across nine states through mid-October, and DOJ’s preservation letters to 29 states and DC warning election officials of criminal sanctions — the pattern is federal law-enforcement presence arriving at three different points in the voting process at once: the registration file, the official who administers it, and now the physical polling place.

Sourcing note. The filing date, court, plaintiffs, defendants and the September 1 Mullin policy statement are confirmed across UnidosUS’s own release, Spectrum News and MS NOW. The § 592 text is quoted verbatim from the statute, verified against Cornell LII on 2026-09-14. The complaint PDF is public via Democracy Forward and is cited here; its specific counts and requested relief have not been read in full, and no ruling has issued.