250 Volunteers to Monitor ICE at Columbus, Ohio, Polling Site

Volunteer numbers at an early voting site in Columbus, Ohio, will climb to roughly 250 people on Election Day, according to organizer Liliana Rivera Baiman, as local groups prepare to document any appearance by federal immigration agents near the polls, WIRED reported.

What happened at the Columbus early voting site?

The Franklin County board of elections building at 1700 Morse Street sits inside a Somali American neighborhood that was the target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Operation Buckeye last December, according to WIRED. ICE said the operation was designed to find "the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens," the outlet reported, but the campaign produced a small number of arrests and months of what residents described as sustained harassment.

Baiman, an organizer with the 614 ICE Watch group and the Ohio Good Neighbor Network, told WIRED that dozens of volunteers already patrol near the site daily and that the figure will rise to about 250 people on Election Day itself.

Why do organizers say this polling location is at risk?

The site's location inside the neighborhood hit hardest by last year's enforcement action is the core of the concern, Baiman said. "Here in central Ohio, our early voting location is located in a neighborhood that's been the hardest hit by ICE, and it's an immigrant community neighborhood," Baiman told WIRED. She said many eligible voters in the Somali American and Latino communities walk to the site rather than drive, making them more visible and, in organizers' view, more vulnerable if agents appear nearby.

Volunteers have been trained to identify ICE uniforms and vehicles and to document any sightings rather than intervene directly, Baiman said. "We teach people that they have to observe the behavior. We show them what to look out for, what does ICE look like, this is the type of uniform that agents wear, these are the types of vehicles that they drive," she told WIRED. The observations are shared across dozens of Signal and WhatsApp groups, according to the outlet.

What does DHS say about ICE operations at polling places?

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told WIRED that the agency has no plans to deploy ICE to polling locations on Election Day. "ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations," the spokesperson said, while adding a caveat: "ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action."

ICE and the White House did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment. The outlet also reported that President Trump and his allies have for six months declined to rule out deployments to voting locations during the midterms.

How are volunteer networks organizing beyond Ohio?

WIRED reported that similar monitoring efforts are underway in towns and cities nationwide, coordinated in part through training sessions run by national organizations including Common Cause, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Indivisible. Local groups such as Living United for Change in Arizona and NorCal Resist are running parallel programs, the outlet said, building networks of volunteers who document ICE activity, explain voter rights, and plan for worst-case scenarios.

WIRED said it spoke with a dozen people involved in these efforts across the country, describing their coordination as a response to what they view as a threat to the ability of immigrant communities to vote freely.

What should voters near these sites watch for?

Based on the training described to WIRED, organizers are asking volunteers and voters to focus on a short list of concrete signals:

• Unfamiliar vehicles or agents in ICE-style uniforms stationed near entrances or parking areas
• Any federal law enforcement presence that was not previously announced by election officials
• Reports shared in real time through local Signal or WhatsApp monitoring groups rather than social media
• Confirmation from DHS's own standing position that it says it is not planning polling-site operations, while reserving the right to act on "intelligence-driven targeted enforcement"

The standoff described by WIRED between DHS's public assurances and community organizers' preparations leaves the question of what happens on Election Day itself unresolved. Neither ICE nor the White House answered WIRED's requests for comment on the volunteer monitoring effort, and DHS's own statement left room for enforcement action tied to what it calls active public safety threats near polling sites.