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<\/p>\nDomenic Powell is a lawyer and policy consultant based in Philadelphia who has worked on immigration, technology, and regulatory issues with the American Civil Liberties Union, the House Judiciary Committee, and at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A high-profile election<\/span> denier is leading election integrity work<\/a> at the Department of Homeland Security. Trump and congressional Republicans are pushing the SAVE America Act<\/a> and threatening to \u201cnationalize<\/a>\u201d elections, purportedly to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting. But despite an occasional murmur<\/a> from Democrats that they are concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deploying to polling places around the country, they\u2019re doing almost nothing to stop this nightmare scenario.\u00a0<\/p>\n In response to the horrific killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Democrats have partially shut down the government, holding DHS spending in limbo as they demand reforms to ICE<\/a>. But instead of looking ahead to the midterms, Democrats have drawn most of their demands from the same well<\/a> of \u201ccommunity policing\u201d policies that became popular during the Black Lives Matter era, like better use-of-force policies, eliminating racial profiling, and deploying more body cameras. The rest of the Democrats\u2019 wish list are proposals to ban things that are already illegal (like entering homes without a warrant or creating databases of activists) or are almost comically toothless, like regulating the uniforms DHS agents wear on the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n The department is quickly metastasizing into a grave threat to the midterms, public safety, and our democracy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The department is quickly metastasizing into a grave threat to the midterms, public safety, and our democracy \u2014 and Democrats are wasting time worried about their uniforms. Although Heather Honey, who pushed the theory that the 2020 race was stolen from Trump and serves in a newly created role as the administration\u2019s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, told elections officials on a private call last week that ICE would not be at polling sites, state officials reportedly weren\u2019t reassured<\/a>. Advocacy organizations have warned that even if that holds true, just the possibility could have a \u201cchilling\u201d effect<\/a> on turnout. If Democrats want to prevent ICE from being used to interfere with elections, they have to be prepared to demand more \u2014 and be willing not to fund DHS until next year if they don\u2019t get these concessions.<\/p>\n First and foremost, Democrats need to stop the department\u2019s heavily politicized \u201cwartime<\/a>\u201d recruitment drive. Thanks to H.R. 1, otherwise known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/a>, ICE has more than doubled<\/a> the number of officers and agents in its ranks since Trump took office. In spite of merit system<\/a> principles which prohibit politicized recruitment, DHS has used its massive influx of cash to target conservative-coded media, gun shows, and NASCAR races, and has used<\/a> white nationalist, neo-Nazi iconography<\/a> in its recruitment advertising. The Department of Justice has similarly focused<\/a> its recruitment efforts on those who demonstrate loyalty to Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n Purposely recruiting right-wing extremists should be reason enough for Democrats to act \u2014 neo-Nazis aren\u2019t going to be mollified by a use-of-force policy. But just as dangerously, DHS\u2019s rush to fill its ranks with ideological zealots could leave the department addled by corruption for decades to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s exactly what happened to the Border Patrol, which has never recovered from a post-9\/11 hiring surge<\/a> in which standards were lowered, training was shortened, and background checks were rushed. Back in 2016, an independent task force led by former New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton and former Drug Enforcement Administration head Karen Tandy found<\/a> Border Patrol was so vulnerable to corruption that it posed a threat to national security. A former internal affairs official at Border Patrol told The Intercept in 2020 that he estimated between 5 and 10 percent of the force was actively or formerly engaged in some form of corruption<\/a>.<\/p>\n What is happening today could be orders of magnitude worse. Consider who is in charge: Trump\u2019s border czar, Tom Homan, reportedly promised<\/a> to steer immigration enforcement-related government contracts in exchange for $50,000 in cash in a paper bag, which he was recorded accepting from an undercover FBI agent at a Cava in suburban Maryland. (Trump\u2019s DOJ shut down the case<\/a> shortly after taking office.)<\/p>\n In November, ProPublica reported<\/a> just-axed Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem directed $220 million in contracts to an advertising firm whose CEO is married to outgoing<\/a> DHS chief spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. Noem also came under fire<\/a> from Congress during her testimony this week on DHS\u2019s contracting practices and whether Corey Lewandowski<\/a> \u2014 her top aide, former Trump campaign manager, and widely rumored paramour<\/a> \u2014 had any role in approving them.<\/p>\n Among the rank and file, at least two dozen ICE employees and contractors have been charged with crimes<\/a> since 2020 ranging from sexually abusing people in custody or taking bribes to remove detention orders. The corruption eating away at DHS, combined with fiscal mismanagement even Republican appropriators called<\/a> \u201cespecially egregious\u201d last year, is an urgent crisis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DHS\u2019s surveillance capabilities, along with its clear penchant<\/a> for using them to suppress dissent, should also alarm Democrats about ICE\u2019s potential role in future elections. Although the Privacy Act of 1974 explicitly prohibits<\/a> federal agencies from maintaining records on how individuals exercise their First Amendment rights, there is growing evidence of rampant databasing of people based on their political beliefs. Last year, DHS issued a Privacy Act notice on its expanded<\/a> records systems, which now include \u201cindividuals who have made credible threats against ICE personnel or facilities.\u201d It\u2019s not hard to imagine that DHS may be internally defining \u201cthreat\u201d to encompass all kinds of nonviolent protest activity<\/a>, and we are seeing the consequences of that in cities across the country.<\/p>\n In Minneapolis and elsewhere, DHS officials and line-level agents have gleefully threatened<\/a> activists with \u201cmaking them famous<\/a>\u201d \u2014 going so far as to show up at legal observers\u2019 homes<\/a> to taunt and intimidate them \u2014 labeled protesters as \u201cdomestic terrorists<\/a>,\u201d and revoked<\/a> one activist\u2019s Global Entry and TSA PreCheck privileges. <\/p>\n Documents released in AAUP v. Rubio<\/a>, a lawsuit challenging visa revocations of university students and faculty for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, revealed that DHS and the State Department were investigating, detaining, and attempting to deport<\/a> students and faculty based solely on their political speech<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n None of these abuses of people\u2019s privacy, data, and constitutional rights has stopped Silicon Valley from rushing in to build surveillance tools<\/a> for DHS. Palantir, which has already built databases for immigration enforcement<\/a>, inked a billion-dollar deal<\/a> with DHS last month. ICE used technology from Clearview AI to scan protesters\u2019 faces<\/a> in Minneapolis. Although Meta doesn\u2019t have a contract with DHS, there have been several <\/a>reports<\/a> of individual CBP agents using Meta\u2019s AI smart sunglasses to record activists while on the job.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n