Polling-Place FOIA Suit Winds Down: DHS Withholds a 12-Page Record in Full, ICE Sends Its Final Response, and the DNC Will Not Challenge the Searches

On October 2, 2026, the parties filed a status report in the DNC’s suit over FOIA requests concerning potential deployment of federal agents and troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices. In it, DHS headquarters said it would withhold the record in full under exemptions 5 and 7(E). The record is twelve pages, sent to the Department of Justice for consultation; due to an administrative error, DHS had left it out of its earlier status reports. In the September 18, 2026 report, the DNC tied DHS’s account of that record to an attachment with the file name “Checklist for Law Enforcement Voter Integrity”, writing that “DHS now indicates that the document has simply been withheld since July.” ICE sent its final response on October 1, 2026.

The DNC said it does not intend to challenge the reasonableness of Defendants’ search or Defendants’ assertion of exemptions. What remains is CBP: approximately 24,000 pages it has not yet reviewed, after its review of prioritized documents did not yield responsive records. The parties will sample those pages and then address fees. The next joint status report is due by October 16, 2026.

Before ICE’s final response, the record on its productions was about press clippings, which the DNC’s request excluded. The DNC said the substantial majority of ICE’s second production once again consisted of unannotated press clippings. On September 18, 2026, ICE reported approximately 9,698 pages remaining, of which approximately 7,000 appeared from metadata to be press clippings.