President Donald Trump is not ruling out the chance that he could lean on ICE agents to patrol polling locations during the November midterms. Here is what he said in a new interview published this week in Time magazine.

Trump Refuses to Rule Out Using ICE to Patrol Polling Locations

The president was on the cover of Time magazine this week as part of a wide-ranging story on his administration. One of the most curious things that Trump discussed in the interview was the potential use of the Insurrection Act. While Trump has never used this piece of legislation, he stopped short of saying that he would not place Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at polling sites in a few weeks.

When asked last week about using the laws that authorize him to use the military to patrol the voting sites, Trump said that he had not thought about it. He went on to say, “We’ll see. You mean the Insurrection Act? I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes."

The refusal to commit to not using ICE for election security is in line with comments last February from then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She said that she could not guarantee that ICE officers would not be stationed outside the polls after former White House strategist Steve Bannon warned that it could happen. During a press conference, Leavitt said that “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November."

More recently, Trump said in May that he would "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections” when asked if he would use the National Guard or ICE to patrol the polls.

About the Insurrection Act

All of this chatter has led many Democratic pundits to believe that the use of ICE in November for this purpose is not out of the question. The president has the power to deploy these officers or other members of the military as part of the Insurrection Act. Passed by Congress in the 1700s and 1800s, this group of laws “authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations."

The act has been invoked a few dozen times over history. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy famously used the power of these laws to send troops to the southern U.S. to desegregate schools that barred Black children from attending. Former President George H.W. Bush was the most recent leader to use the act, sending the military to control the protests and riots that broke out in Los Angeles after four white police officers were found not guilty in the beating of Rodney King.

While Trump has never formally invoked the Insurrection Act, he has not been shy about deploying the troops into various American cities over the last two years. For example, Trump has sent the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles, and also deployed the National Guard to Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.

The White House has also deployed ICE agents to Democratic-controlled cities and states, prompting outrage from those on the left. The Time interview was published on October 1, the same day that the family of Renee Good announced that it is suing the federal government and several members of the Trump administration for their part in the fatal shooting of Good in January in Minneapolis.

The lawsuits from the Good family allege that the defendants were negligent and intentional in the shooting. Good was one of two American citizens who were killed in the Twin Cities during an ICE surge last winter.

Donna Ganger, the mother of the 37-year-old victim, spoke at a Capitol Hill forum last week about the situation. Ganger said that “I am a registered Republican. I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States, innocents like our family and the others here, against terrorists. Certainly not to accuse those of us here of being terrorists and take precious lives.”

Other Notable Topics in the Time Interview

The Time interview also explored the FBI raid of election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, in January. The raid was triggered as Trump continues to assert that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that he was the winner.

Trump is still beating the drum that elections need to be monitored more closely, despite some members of his own party pushing back on the belief that the 2020 election was stolen. Wyoming’s Republican governor, Mark Gordon, recently criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for dispatching officials to monitor poll workers when his state conducted its primary in August.  “I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns. I don’t like that. I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either,” Gordon said.

It has been reported in recent weeks that the White House is getting increasingly nervous about losing control of the House and the Senate after the November midterms. Most polls show that the Democrats are likely to retake at least one chamber of Congress.

While the GOP is fighting to hold on to these seats, Trump is doubling down on his belief that he can save the party. During the Time interview, Trump said that public polls that demonstrate his record-low approval ratings are "fake numbers," asserting that “I would beat anybody running today by 20 points.” He went on to tell Time, “I think we’ll do okay if I campaign, and I intend to. You don’t give me enough credit. When I campaign, I give people a lot.”

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