Judge Forces DOJ to Explain Why It’s Hiding 127,000 Pages on ICE at the Polls

Judge Forces DOJ to Explain Why It’s Hiding 127,000 Pages on ICE at the Polls

ICE told a federal judge, with a straight face, that it had “no responsive records” about plans to put federal agents at polling places. Then somebody actually checked, and lo and behold: 11,103 pages at ICE alone. Customs and Border Protection? 116,779 records. That’s over 127,000 documents the government swore didn’t exist, now sitting in a vault somewhere while the clock ticks toward November.

Administrative Office of the United States Courts (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Not a single page has been produced. Zero. Less than four months before the 2026 midterms, and the agency that already had two agents confront a poll worker in Syracuse during a primary can’t seem to find the photocopier.

Funny how that works.

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Senior U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee who ran the D.C. federal court through Trump’s entire first term, has had enough. On Saturday she ordered the DOJ to produce a partial Vaughn Index by September 10. That’s a list of every document they’re withholding, what’s in it, and the legal excuse for keeping it secret. She cited the “time sensitivity of upcoming elections,” which is judge-speak for “stop playing games, the election is in four months.”

Back in July, Howell ordered ICE and CBP to process at least 1,000 pages a month. The DNC’s lawyers say the government responded by “queueing nonresponsive documents before responsive ones,” dumping press clippings and public materials that nobody asked for while the actual internal memos about deploying agents to voting sites stay buried. The DNC explicitly excluded press clippings from their FOIA request. ICE sent them anyway.

Isiwal (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Ask yourself who benefits from that kind of stalling.

The DOJ’s response, filed under the name of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, called the DNC’s complaints “unfounded” but admitted they’d “drawn ICE’s attention” to the queuing issue. So they’re not denying it happened. They’re just saying the insinuation is unfounded. That’s a distinction without a difference, and they know it.

Here’s what we do know without a single document. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has publicly endorsed putting federal agents at polling places. The White House has refused to rule it out. Prominent MAGA figures are openly calling for ICE