The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the Justice Department to investigate the U.S. Border Patrol’s decision to hold a crowd control exercise, which ultimately was scrapped, about a mile from a polling location in a historically Latin neighborhood of El Paso, Texas.
“The Trump administration must answer for its decision to plan a military-style exercise — coupled with armored vehicles and Border Patrol agents within a short walking distance from the nearest polling location,” Andre Segura, legal director for the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement issued late Tuesday.
On Monday, Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector announced it would hold a “mobile field force demonstration” at the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry the following day. That port is located on the other side of a neighborhood where the Armijo Recreation Center was located and expected to see voters turn out to vote in elections Tuesday, including a Senate race.
The ACLU said it joined local groups who, upon hearing of the event, called on the federal law enforcement agency to cancel it because it could scare away voters from turning out to the precinct that is in the hometown of Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat challenging Republican Ted Cruz for his Senate seat.
Border Patrol canceled the crowd control demonstration, but the ACLU said the incident appeared to have been an attempt to bar local residents from voting and is now bringing in President Trump’s legal department to investigate.
The labor union told Chris Herren, chief of the DOJ’s civil rights division’s voting section, the planned demonstration violated the Voting Rights Act because it could have intimidated — even without the intent to do so — people from voting Tuesday, though it’s not clear why legal residents would avoid the event even if an immigration checkpoint were set up.
“Voter intimidation has no place in our elections and is illegal. Yet the Border Patrol was planning to proceed with this intimidating crowd control exercise for no good reason on Election Day,” Sophia Lin Lakin, staff attorney for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said. “We are asking that the DOJ investigate that decision, particularly in light of President Trump’s menacing tweet yesterday calling for law enforcement to aggressively monitor supposed concerns about mythical illegal voting.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of Border Patrol, said the demonstration was part of border-wide preparations for the thousands of migrants traveling together through Mexico to the U.S. who could arrive in one region all at one time.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been and will continue to prepare for the potential arrival of thousands of people migrating in a caravan heading toward the United States, through the Southwest border. This includes training exercises, deploying additional CBP personnel and partnering with the U.S. military,” a CBP spokesperson said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
“The U.S Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector postponed joint caravan-related exercises on the El Paso border scheduled for today out of an abundance of caution and due to inaccurate reporting that caused unneeded confusion in border communities,” the official said. “We will continue training exercises in the following days, as necessary to ensure border security and the safety of the American people, the traveling public, CBP personnel and the communities in which we serve.”
CBP spokesman Roger Maier flat out denied that the operation was intended to prevent people from voting.
“There is no link to the election date,” Maier told Texas Monthly.
