A 150-Year-Old Law Says No Armed Federal Officers at the Polls. Civil Rights Groups and Denver Just Asked a Court to Enforce It Against ICE.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - National civil rights organizations and the City and County of Denver sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on September 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Case No. 1:26-cv-03157), asking the court to declare unlawful and block the administration's authorization for armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to enter polling places for immigration enforcement during the 2026 midterm elections.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed the policy on September 1, according to the complaint. Democracy Forward and Public Rights Project represent the plaintiffs: the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and the Common Cause Education Fund, UnidosUS, and the City and County of Denver. The defendants are DHS, Secretary Mullin, ICE and Acting ICE Director David Venturella.

The suit's central statute, 18 U.S.C. 592, is a federal prohibition enacted during the Civil War era that bars armed federal personnel from polling places, a ban the complaint says has been enforced for more than 150 years and admits of a single exception: repelling armed enemies of the United States. The complaint alleges the DHS authorization violates that prohibition by permitting armed ICE officers to enter polling locations for ordinary enforcement, including serving warrants and detaining individuals suspected of unlawful presence, and separately alleges the policy is arbitrary and capricious.

The requested relief is a declaration that the policy is unlawful and an injunction against implementing it, with armed federal officers barred from polls except under the statute's own exception.

The policy's legality is an allegation before a court, not an adjudicated fact; the government had not answered the complaint as of September 12, and no hearing date had been published in the accessible reporting.

LULAC CEO Juan Proano said in the plaintiffs' release that voters should be able to cast ballots "without fear of intimidation by armed ICE officers at polling places." Common Cause President and CEO Virginia Kase Solomon said: "No American should ever have to walk past armed federal law enforcement just to cast a ballot."

Why It Matters for Memphis

The challenged authorization is nationwide, and Shelby County's polling places on November 3 sit under whatever rule this case leaves standing. Memphis is also one of the cities where armed federal immigration officers already operate daily alongside local police through the Memphis Safe Task Force, so the question of where those officers may lawfully stand on Election Day is concrete here, not hypothetical. If the policy survives, armed ICE officers may enter Memphis polling sites; if the court enforces the prohibition, the 150-year-old line holds.

The Oversight Question

The DHS policy the suit challenges has been confirmed by the Secretary but not published. What does the written authorization actually say, and why has the document that governs armed officers at American polls not been made public?

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