President Donald Trump and his allies hope to boost Republicans’ electoral chances in the upcoming midterms, but their racist gerrymandering efforts may not be enough and their voter suppression bill appears to have some dim prospects. So, as the president calls for the federal government to “take over” elections, some of his allies are openly backing the idea of deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places this fall. 

Joining that chorus on Wednesday was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. During a conversation with scandal-plagued Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp, Blanche said, “Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places? Illegals can’t vote.”

Blanche’s raised eyebrows and pregnant pause for applause suggested the deputy attorney general thought he was cooking with that one.

In reality, there are plenty of reasons to oppose federal agents being deployed to polling places, not the least of which is that such deployments are illegal unless the state needs to repel armed enemies — a fact that one would expect an officer of the Department of Justice to be aware of. Blanche, previously the president’s personal defense attorney, perhaps has some incentive to claim ignorance and has not hesitated to make excuses for the president before.

And that’s before one considers that the Supreme Court opened the door to racial profiling by Trump’s masked ICE agents, who’ve ensnared American citizens in their roundups and garnered comparisons by historians, legal experts and at least one federal judge to the Ku Klux Klan.

With that as context, the prospect of federal immigration agents at polling places should concern anyone who is not hellbent on racist intimidation in the midterms and beyond.

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