Despite the Trump administration saying it has no plans to deploy Immigration Enforcement Officers at the polls, advocates in New York remain cautious.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is something we should be concerned about and prepared for,\u201d said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. \u201cIf we stay ready, we don\u2019t have to get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New York Immigration Coalition says it\u2019s \u201cpreparing for everything that could potentially be possible\u201d this election season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncluding using federal agents to intimidate people who are trying to exercise their rights as U.S. citizens in voting,\u201d said Awawdeh.<\/p>\n
In a statement to Spectrum News 1, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only time it would be appropriate for armed troops to be anywhere near polling places would be if we were under attack by a foreign enemy,\u201d said Sean Morales-Doyle, senior director for the voting rights and elections program for the Brennan Center for Justice.<\/p>\n
Despite DHS\u2019s claims, advocates say the fear is real.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE cannot be at the polls, but that doesn\u2019t stop a lot of voices disclaiming that ICE will be at the polls, will be sent to the polls,\u201d said Hae-Lin Choi, co-founder of Hands off NYC.<\/p>\n
So, advocates say plans are in the works to deploy \u201cthousands\u201d of poll observers across New York to help ease some voters\u2019 concerns.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also increasing outreach to inform New Yorkers of who to call if they think they\u2019re being prevented from exercising their right to vote.<\/p>\n
Voting rights lawyers say they are also preparing if they need to go to court.<\/p>\n
Advocates maintain the most important thing is that people make a plan to vote. They recommend casting your ballot early.<\/p>\n
If a voter has questions, they can call the New York State Board of Elections at 518-474-1953.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite the Trump administration saying it has no plans to deploy Immigration Enforcement Officers at the polls, advocates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[206,75,84,83,9,24,49,12,5304,112,108,63,87,200],"class_list":["post-375351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-state","tag-news","tag-nicole-neuman","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}