ICE activity surges across US ahead of midterms, but early voter turnout is surging too

Across the United States, reports of heightened Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity have emerged in the weeks ahead of the midterm elections, according to reports gathered by NPR and its member stations in various cities and states. Advocates worry about how close it is to the midterms, but so far voter turnout is surging.

Very early on Wednesday morning, Dover, New Jersey, Councilwoman Sandra Wittner started getting messages about immigration agents. A dozen or more were gathering outside a Walgreens, according to the messages she was getting. Throughout the day, neighbours in north New Jersey saw a spike in ICE activity.

Wittner said there was definitely a lot of apprehension and fear, that residents were not sure if something huge was about to happen, and that people were not feeling comfortable or safe. She is not sure who was detained or where, which is unsurprising: reporting says it is difficult to report on ICE crackdowns as they happen, because the Department of Homeland Security no longer publicly shares timely information on its operations.

NPR wrote to the agency to ask if there has been a recent surge. It responded that ICE agents uphold the nation's immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

And yet NPR and its member stations have received tips from rural Illinois, Oregon, Detroit and California about surges in ICE enforcement throughout October. An official within New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office who was not authorised to speak publicly confirmed that they have noted a surge in ICE activity in the city.

A member of a volunteer group of neighbours in New York said they are certainly witnessing an uptick in activity, and have been since the summer. The member, who asked that NPR not use her name for fear of retaliation, said her group goes to the scene where an ICE operation is happening, documents it, reminds those being detained of their rights and alerts neighbours. In the past few weeks, she said, they have seen numerous large operations, or cluster raids, with multiple agents going to one spot and then the next.

On the other side of the country, Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Troy Brynelson has reported a similar trend in Portland. He said ICE activity has really picked up there, seems concentrated in commercial areas, and is a noticeable uptick compared with the summer, continuing at least anecdotally throughout October.

Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School said the tactics the administration has been deploying in communities really appear to be designed to try to intimidate voters. Juan Proaño of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights organisation, said he is concerned because this is happening so close to the elections: it is not about ICE at the actual polling station, he said, it is ICE at the perimeter of the polling station, and mass enforcement actions away from the polls could still, through social media and the news, be enough to dissuade somebody from going out to vote.

Weiser, however, said there is no indication the raids are affecting turnout. On the contrary, she said there has been a surge in early voting in minority communities across the country, that Americans are tuning this out, and that huge surges in participation are being seen in communities of colour, in Latino communities, and in all the communities targeted by ICE and DHS. Even so, she said intimidation at the polls is illegal and should be reported.