The University flagged a CBC News piece on Tuesday that asks a question: what does a federal immigration crackdown do to an election? With the midterms on Nov. 3, Minnesota is about to find out.
Here's the scale CBC lays out. About 9 months before the midterms, roughly 3,000 federal immigration officers poured into Minnesota under Operation Metro Surge. They arrested about 4,000 people and clashed with residents who were trying to slow them down. 2 U.S. citizens were killed during the operation.
The story's main thread is what the people who resisted the surge did next. Grassroots groups are now running "democracy defender" trainings in community centers. Attendees practice for possible disruptions at the polls: they form neighborhood groups, split into zones and build communication networks. Groups including Unidos MN and COPAL are training "democracy protectors" on the same model they used to document immigration enforcement during the surge.
State officials are preparing too. Secretary of State Steve Simon said election officials "have to add a new category" of planning for the possibility that the federal government might interfere with the election. Attorney General Keith Ellison is working through emergency response scenarios, and Hennepin County Auditor Daniel Rogan said the county joined a lawsuit "out of an abundance of caution." The Department of Homeland Security has said several times that it has no plans to station immigration agents at polling places. Minnesota law already keeps law enforcement from posting up within 100 feet of a polling place entrance unless they normally work in the building or an election judge calls them in.
The politics also run through campus expertise. Kathryn Pearson, a political science professor at UMN, said back in February that "immigration definitely overshadows fraud" as an issue and that it "has backfired on Minnesota Republicans, I think, in several ways." She also said Democrats would likely have the edge on which party voters trust to handle immigration. That was her read after Republican legislators invited social media influencers to highlight fraud in state programs, which was followed by the federal surge.
For students voting for the first time, or for the first time in Minnesota, the practical part is simple. Election Day is Nov. 3, and early and mail voting are both available. If you have concerns about what happens at your polling place, the Secretary of State's Office runs a hotline at 1-877-600-VOTE.
