Preserving the body politic against anti-immigration surges on Election Day

The body is political. It acts as a physical plane where intangible legislative ideas are made visible. Certain phenotypes, or physical characteristics, can either trigger suspicion or secure the safety of privilege. In a democracy, the body votes for itself, and a healthy society promises every member the right to seek protection through policy. When the state makes certain bodies afraid to appear in public, it also makes them afraid to vote.

California ICE blitz

On the morning of Monday, October 5, 18-year-old Mayrin was on her way to class at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California, with her father at the wheel. At about 9:45 am, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detained him in a campus parking lot. It was the first day California’s ballot drop boxes opened, and an adjoining lot in the same parking area was an active ballot drop-off site. Voters had to pass through the area where agents were making the arrest to reach the box. By the end of the day, masked ICE officers had arrested at least 17 people in Santa Maria and nearby Guadalupe.

When the state makes certain bodies afraid to appear in public, it also makes them afraid to vote.

ICE told a local station it had no record of activity on the campus that morning. Still, the arrest fit a larger pattern. ICE has kept a heightened presence across the country since President Trump began his second term, and on September 27, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a “nationwide public safety surge” aimed at sanctuary jurisdictions in 11 states and Washington, D.C. Officers were reportedly told to arrest anyone without status regardless of criminal history. A source said that management “wanted numbers.”

Days later, a more targeted campaign surfaced. On October 7, the Washington Examiner reported that ICE had quietly launched an operation known internally as Operation Safe California, beginning in and around San Diego and expected to last at least 45 days. One source said officers were told to “go after anybody,” regardless of criminal history; another said management wanted numbers. Homeland Security sources told the Daily Wire that more than 250 officers had been sent into Southern California. Still, DHS has neither confirmed nor denied the operation.

The Santa Maria arrest came the same week the operation began. DHS has not acknowledged any connection to the election. But the timing—and the choice to make an arrest on a college campus beside a ballot drop box—tie the image of a handcuffed body to the act of voting.

A fraught history of voter suppression and surveillance

This image has a history in American elections. Before pivotal votes, organized efforts have repeatedly treated certain voters’ bodies as suspect in order to keep them from the polls. In 1964, the Republican National Committee ran a national program that read voters’ bodies in much the same way, with surveillance and intimidation as its main tools. Its “ballot security” program, known as Operation Eagle Eye, concentrated on minority precincts as the party tried to win the presidency for Barry Goldwater against the incumbent Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson.

But the timing—and the choice to make an arrest on a college campus beside a ballot drop box—tie the image of a handcuffed body to the act of voting.

The program worked on several fronts. Before Election Day, it sent 1.8 million pieces of mail to voters in what it called suspect precincts, then used undelivered envelopes to build lists of voters to challenge. On Election Day, The New York Times reported that 100,000 trained Republican workers were stationed at polling places in 35 cities. These “watchers” carried cameras and two-way radios and called on friendly sheriffs to investigate voters for fraud. They questioned voters about where they lived and where they came from, singled out those who spoke accented English, and in some precincts demanded that voters read or interpret passages of the Constitution. Leaders encouraged watchers to carry cameras simply to create the appearance of surveillance. National director Charles Barr predicted that 1.25 million voters would be challenged or discouraged from voting.

Eagle Eye treated the body (an accent, a skin color, an address) as probable cause for fraud. It also failed. Johnson won in a landslide, and Democrats mocked the program in a campaign ad as “Operation Evil Eye.” The next year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended literacy tests in covered jurisdictions; amendments in 1970 banned them nationwide.

The logic of Operation Eagle Eye outlived the program, including in California. On Election Day 1988, Latino voters arriving at 20 Santa Ana polling places were met by uniformed guards hired by Assembly candidate Curt Pringle’s campaign and the Orange County Republican Party, holding signs in English and Spanish warning that noncitizens could not vote. Tom Umberg, then a federal prosecutor, watched voters see the guards and turn away. The episode produced a new state felony law and a settlement paid to five Latino voters. Nearly four decades later, Umberg is a state senator and the lead author of SB 884, which Gov. Newsom signed on September 19. It bars law enforcement from making arrests within 200 feet of a polling place on Election Day.

Today’s era of weakened protections and heightened surveillance

Eagle Eye’s watchers singled out voters with accents. Sixty-one years later, an accent appears on the list of factors federal agents may weigh in deciding whom to stop.

Over six decades later, the Supreme Court has again allowed profiling based on perceived race. On September 8, 2025, in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court stayed, or paused, a district court order that had barred immigration agents from making roving stops based only on four factors: apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or accented English; presence at places like bus stops, car washes, and day-labor pickup sites; and type of work. The order covered the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and six surrounding counties, among them Santa Barbara, where Santa Maria sits.

The court issued no majority opinion. In a solo concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that apparent ethnicity alone cannot justify a stop but may be weighed alongside other factors. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, warning that the decision allows the government to seize people based on how they look, the language they speak, and the work they do.

This is the sharpest parallel between 1964 and today. Eagle Eye’s watchers singled out voters with accents. Sixty-one years later, an accent appears on the list of factors federal agents may weigh in deciding whom to stop.

Today, surveillance also runs through databases. Records that Democracy Forward obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, released on October 7, show that ICE’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), drew on 50.6 million voter roll records from the Department of Justice and 26,235 records derived from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. HSI also reviewed voter-registration nonprofits and weighed sending undercover agents into them. Its review of about 41 New Jersey organizations found nothing. There is no evidence that any undercover operation took place. Still, where Eagle Eye built its challenge lists by mailing voters and counting returned envelopes, HSI is doing the same work at the scale of a national database, and the groups under review are the civic organizations that read this magazine.

A newly naturalized citizen who sees masked agents near a drop box may simply turn around and give up the vote rather than risk the encounter.

Intimidation of this kind does not need an agent at every polling place. It works through atmosphere, and the atmosphere is already changing how people move. In Kern County, a foreman told KGET that his crew had shrunk from more than 50 workers to 40 because people were afraid to leave their homes. Across the Central Valley, residents have been contacting local organizers to ask whether it is safe to go outside. A newly naturalized citizen who sees masked agents near a drop box may simply turn around and give up the vote rather than risk the encounter.

Noncitizens cannot vote, so the people ICE detains are not the voters at risk. If this surge is meant to intimidate voters, and DHS denies that it is, its real audience is elsewhere: the children, spouses, and neighbors of the people being detained. They are citizens who share the same features, walk the same streets, and live in the same neighborhoods. They are the bodies the arrests are teaching to stay home.

Where the law stands today

Federal and state law already prohibit voter intimidation, but neither may reach a diffuse enforcement surge. The most direct federal statute is 18 U.S.C. § 592, a Civil War-era law that makes it a crime for anyone in the civil or military service of the United States to bring or keep “troops or armed men” at a place where an election is held. The Justice Department’s own election-crimes guidance has long read it to keep armed federal agents away from open polling places. Two neighboring provisions are narrower: § 593 bars members of the armed forces from interfering with elections, and § 595 bars federal administrative employees from using their official authority to interfere with a federal election.

No court has yet settled whether § 592 covers armed ICE officers making an arrest beside a ballot drop box, and voting rights groups are asking a federal court for an answer. Their amended complaint, filed October 7, cites the Santa Maria arrest and adds a claim under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidating anyone for voting or attempting to vote.

California law is more specific but narrower in time and place. Elections Code § 18544 makes it a crime for armed or uniformed personnel to be stationed near a polling place without election officials’ authorization, and SB 884 now bars arrests within 200 feet of a polling place on Election Day. But the Santa Maria arrest took place at a drop box, on the first day of voting, four weeks before Election Day. A statute keyed to polling places on Election Day may not reach it. What the law does provide is a channel. Intimidation at or near any voting site can be reported to county election officials and the state Attorney General, reports that build the record relied upon by courts.

We fight back with community, solidarity, and mobilization

Intimidation works best on a body that is alone, siloed from the protection of community. The answer lies within the collective, and many California groups are already standing with voters who might “look” like noncitizens to an agent. In Santa Maria, 805 UndocuFund’s Rapid Response Network alerted the community to the Hancock arrest shortly before 10 a.m., minutes after it happened. A coalition that includes CAUSE, MICOP, Future Leaders of America, and Santa Maria Indivisible is pressing local officials to follow up on the incident.

Farther south, San Diego’s City Heights Defense Committee runs morning patrols and rapid response when ICE is spotted, along with mutual aid for families hit by detention. CAIR-CA has issued a statewide alert with safety and know-your-rights guidance. Democracy Forward’s records requests exposed the voter-records operation. And Senator Alex Padilla made an unannounced oversight visit to San Diego’s ICE holding facility, demanding answers about the surge.

Readers can join this work directly. Funders can most directly keep people out of isolation with small, flexible rapid-response grants to response networks and legal observers. Voter-registration nonprofits, which HSI records show are under scrutiny, should treat data security and legal preparedness as part of the work. Everyone can vote in company: walking neighbors to drop boxes or helping them vote by mail takes the body out of the line of sight. California’s broad vote-by-mail access, which about 81 percent of voters used in 2024, is itself a protection. Finally, reports to election officials and the state Attorney General build the record necessarily for subsequent litigation, and the Santa Maria arrest is already in a court filing.

Eagle Eye’s architects expected to stop more than a million voters, and the election went the other way. Democrats exposed the program and mocked it, Johnson won in a landslide, and the Voting Rights Act passed the following year. Operation Safe California rests on the same premise. It attempts to create frightened bodies who will stay home. On the afternoon of her father’s arrest, Mayrin spoke at a press conference on the same campus where he was taken. In a democracy, the body votes for itself. The answer to an operation built to keep bodies home is to show up, mail a ballot, or walk a neighbor to the drop box. Those of us whose bodies draw less scrutiny from the state should walk beside those who draw more.

Election Day is November 3.