--- title: White House Doesn't Rule Out Sending ICE to Polling Locations description: Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had not heard Trump plans to deploy immigration agents to polling sites, but didn't rule it out canonical: https://time.com/7371900/steve-bannon-ice-election-donald-trump-leavitt/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-02-05T21:59:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-31T13:10:53.585Z article:section: Politics og:title: White House Doesn't Rule Out Sending ICE to Polling Locations og:description: Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had not heard Trump plans to deploy immigration agents to polling sites, but didn't rule it out og:url: https://time.com/7371900/steve-bannon-ice-election-donald-trump-leavitt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt84b035a8dcb2e5f2/6998ce1bd32e93bfabcd7cc0/GettyImages-2259484033.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: US-POLITICS-BRIEFING-LEAVITT og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: White House Doesn't Rule Out Sending ICE to Polling Locations twitter:description: Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had not heard Trump plans to deploy immigration agents to polling sites, but didn't rule it out twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt84b035a8dcb2e5f2/6998ce1bd32e93bfabcd7cc0/GettyImages-2259484033.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Bannon Calls on Trump to Send ICE to the Polls; White House Doesn't Rule It Out  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Feb 5, 2026 9:59 PM UTC  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 5, 2026. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 5, 2026.Saul Loeb—AFP via Getty Images  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Feb 5, 2026 9:59 PM UTC President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon suggested on his War Room podcast this week that the Trump Administration should send [Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents](https://time.com/7358027/ice-agents-minnesota-alex-pretti-abolish-ice/) to polling places during this year’s midterm elections. “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon said. During a press briefing with reporters on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she has not heard President Donald Trump consider deploying immigration agents to polling sites, but she refused to rule it out. “That’s not something I’ve ever heard the president consider, no,” Leavitt said. When a reporter asked Leavitt if she could guarantee the American public that immigration agents won’t be around voting locations, Leavitt said: “I can’t guarantee an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November—I mean, that’s frankly a very silly hypothetical question. But what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the President discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.” President Trump has repeatedly spread false claims that large numbers of non-citizens voted illegally in presidential elections and that widespread voter fraud led to his 2020 election loss. Trump said on Monday that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least — many, 15 places” and “nationalize the voting.” Doing so would violate the Constitution which requires elections be run by states and counties, a system that was designed to avoid having a sitting President influence the outcome. Last week, FBI agents, along with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, entered Fulton County, Georgia election facilities with a search warrant and seized ballots from the November 2020 election that Trump lost to Joe Biden. Election experts and Democratic lawmakers have pointed to recent comments from Trump and his allies, as well as the scenes playing out in places like [Minneapolis](https://time.com/7368923/minneapolis-ice-operation-protests-renee-good-alex-pretti/) and Georgia, to raise concerns about the Administration deploying armed federal officials to shape the election results. Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, voiced that concern in an interview on The Contrarian podcast on Wednesday, saying he was “greatly afraid” that “those ICE roving vans be used to try to go and intimidate voters at the polling station.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7371900/steve-bannon-ice-election-donald-trump-leavitt/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7371900/steve-bannon-ice-election-donald-trump-leavitt/"},"headline":"Bannon Calls on Trump to Send ICE to the Polls; White House Doesn't Rule It Out","datePublished":"2026-02-05T21:59:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T13:10:53.585Z","description":"\"I haven’t heard the President discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations\"","url":"https://time.com/7371900/steve-bannon-ice-election-donald-trump-leavitt/","keywords":["elections"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt84b035a8dcb2e5f2/6998ce1bd32e93bfabcd7cc0/GettyImages-2259484033.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt84b035a8dcb2e5f2/6998ce1bd32e93bfabcd7cc0/GettyImages-2259484033.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-POLITICS-BRIEFING-LEAVITT","caption":"US-POLITICS-BRIEFING-LEAVITT","creditText":"Saul Loeb—AFP via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/elections/","name":"elections"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7371900/steve-bannon-ice-election-donald-trump-leavitt/","name":"Bannon Calls on Trump to Send ICE to the Polls; White House Doesn't Rule It Out"}}]}] ```