Justice Department tells court no FBI or ICE employees will serve as its Election Day monitors

The Justice Department told a federal judge in a sworn declaration filed Wednesday, Oct. 28, that no FBI or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees will serve as its election monitors in the Nov. 3 midterms. The declaration says employees of the Bureau of Prisons; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Drug Enforcement Administration will serve.¹ The next day, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ordered the government to make reasonable efforts to process and release records on a rolling basis before the election. She noted that three business days remained and that the NAACP waited over two weeks to begin those talks after the government offered.²

The declaration was filed in NAACP v. Dhillon, No. 1:26-cv-03461, a Freedom of Information Act suit in federal court in Washington against the department's Civil Rights Division and its head, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.³

What the declaration says

Eric Neff, acting chief of the division's Voting Section, said the section is monitoring elections "in a similar manner and for similar purposes" as in past cycles, mainly to check compliance with federal civil rights laws such as the Voting Rights Act.¹

• The division is not using sworn officers authorized to make arrests as monitors in a law enforcement capacity, Neff said.
• Apart from one U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee on detail to the department, the division knows of no Department of Homeland Security employees taking part.
• Monitors may not carry firearms or wear federal insignia, and may speak with voters only outside polling places after they have voted.
• Gathering volunteers' position titles before the election would "catastrophically interfere" with the work, Neff said.
• The division has not finished choosing where monitors will go.¹

A department notice filed Oct. 27 said it will not have a final list of jurisdictions until Election Day.⁴

The records request

The NAACP requested 20 categories of records on Sept. 1, including deployment locations, training materials and whether FBI, DHS, ICE or other law enforcement personnel would serve. It sued Oct. 2, saying the division missed FOIA's 20-business-day deadline, and its amended complaint called the deployment "unprecedented."³⁵ Dhillon told Bloomberg in August that the department planned to send a record 1,000 monitors to polling places, CBS News reported.⁶

The department's Oct. 13 opposition said the NAACP had not sought expedited processing and that its request was "exceedingly broad," and argued that "it is not in the public's interest to allow Plaintiff to jump the line ahead of other requesters."⁵

Sooknanan denied the NAACP's emergency motion at an Oct. 22 hearing. She called the request "as broad a FOIA request as I have ever seen" and said the group had not shown irreparable harm.⁷ The NAACP then narrowed its priority to four categories and offered to settle if the records were produced by Oct. 29. The department declined, saying the request would be processed when it reached the front of its litigation queue and that two of the categories were likely exempt as pre-decisional.⁸

In August releases on primary monitoring in Florida, Wyoming and Michigan, the department said its monitoring aims to ensure "transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law."⁹¹⁰

The NAACP and three individual plaintiffs filed a separate suit Oct. 16, NAACP v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-03626, asking the court to enjoin the department's poll monitoring program. Its docket, assigned to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, shows no motion for emergency relief and no ruling as of its latest entry, Oct. 27.¹¹

What the records do not show

• The declaration gives no count of monitors overall or by agency.¹
• No list of monitored jurisdictions has been filed or released.⁴
• The docket does not show records produced to the NAACP as of Oct. 29; the next joint status report is due Nov. 12.²
• The Blanche docket shows no response from the department.¹¹