Putting the Election On ICE
Minneapolis Is a Rehearsal for The Main Event
People dragged from cars. Tear gas and flash bang grenades tossed indiscriminately at peaceful protesters. American residents, some citizens and some not, swept away to distant prisons. Uniformed, armed, masked-wearing thugs on American streets. A peaceful mother of three, shot to death in her car. It is vile, stomach-churning, and horrific. And it is only practice. What we are witnessing on the streets of Minneapolis and other American cities is a dress rehearsal for the main event on November 3, 2026. Donald Trump and ICE are not only targeting immigrants; they are targeting democracy.
The Main Event: November 3, 2026
Voters approach the voting center in a church located in Tucson, Arizona. They are lining up to cast a vote in the 2026 congressional election.
A group of 30 to 40 armed federal agents, ICE and Border Patrol, are milling about the premises, just outside the 75-foot limit required by Arizona law. The masked agents confront people arriving to cast ballots, and ask if they are citizens. They stop people of color, mostly Mexican-Americans and Native Americans, who look the way a lot of people look in this part of Tucson.
While Arizona requires voters to prove their identity and residence at polling places, it doesn’t require proof of citizenship. The agents don’t care. They aren’t there to protect voting; they are there to prevent it. Similar bands of armed, masked agents simultaneously appear at other locations with a high concentration of minority voters. In Pima County, those areas tend to vote for Democrats. Elsewhere, on Tucson’s far east side, and northwest in Oro Valley, there are no federal agents to be seen. Those regions are whiter and more Republican than the areas targeted.
The federal agents stop and question people. One of those being questioned demands to see the agent’s ID. The agent strikes him with his baton, leaving him writhing on the ground, grabbing at his left ear while blood pools around him. Other agents start to rough up people, tossing some into unmarked vans. Potential voters, witnessing the violence, turn away in fear without casting a ballot. Some vote elsewhere, but most return home or to work without exercising their right to vote. Others hear about the raid and decide not to vote. The ICE supervisor sees voters turning away and gives a thumbs up. Mission accomplished.
How To ICE An Election
“We’ll want to have — get rid of the ballots,” Trump declared during the 2020 presidential campaign, “and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.” Trump knew he was in political peril in 2020 and he knows it now. That’s why many Americans fear he will attempt to influence, overturn, or even cancel the upcoming congressional election.
Trump recently stated, “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” as noted by Rex Huppke of USA TODAY, who takes Trump seriously. “If he says it and it sounds preposterous,” Huppke wrote, “assume it’s going to happen.”
The Brennan Center, while not predicting Trump will attempt to cancel the election, does anticipate interference. Writer Jasleen Singh notes these possibilities:
attempting to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems;
targeting or threatening to target election officials and others who keep elections free and fair;
supporting people who undermine election administration; and
retreating from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the election process.
Huppke and Singh overlook another – and arguably more likely – possibility: the targeting of individual precincts and voting centers by federal agents under the guise of “immigration enforcement.” If American democracy is attacked in 2026, it’s unlikely to be a holistic attack. More likely, it will consist of a narrow approach that identifies locations with minority voters who tend to support Democrats.
Arizona Congressional District 6, currently represented by Republican Juan Ciscomani, is listed as a “toss up” by the Cook Political Report. Ciscomani narrowly defeated Democrat Kirsten Engle in 2024, and was out-polled by Engle and two other candidates. In 2026 Trump, a Republican vote magnet, won’t be on the ballot.
CD-6 is a swing district. A few precincts can make a difference. If federal agents can suppress enough Democratic votes with faux immigration raids focused on minority voting areas, Ciscomani’s chances improve. There is no need to cancel the election, or seize voting machines, or sue over the results. Just identify precincts with large minority populations that historically vote Democratic. Once they are identified, Trump can deploy small cohorts of armed, masked agents to terrorize people on the way to the polls. Precinct by precinct, county by county, federal agents will scare off or apprehend enough potential Democratic voters to change the outcome. All it takes is arithmetic and bullets.
Trump’s agents are rehearsing election day strategy on the streets of Minneapolis. They are learning how to target and intimidate people of color. They are learning how to terrify and subdue the population, to make people run from them, to make them afraid. To make them stay home. The so-called immigration raids are a pretext, a rehearsal for their ultimate purpose: scaring off voters and rigging the election.
The Time to Prepare Is Now
Democrats should identify every precinct in every swing county that is a likely Trump target based on minority representation and Democratic voting histories. Then publish the list and warn local communities to prepare for phony “immigration enforcement” raids on election day. Blow the whistle. Find the brightest light you can and shine it on them.
Cockroaches hate the light.