614 ICE Watch plans 250 volunteers near Columbus polls

614 ICE Watch plans about 250 volunteers near Columbus polling sites on Election Day next week, according to a WIRED report published Oct. 27, as groups prepare to document any federal immigration enforcement activity.

The effort would expand 614 ICE Watch’s presence from dozens of daily patrol volunteers and ties election monitoring to encrypted messaging tools, while DHS told WIRED that ICE has no polling-site operations planned.

The Franklin County board of elections building at 1700 Morse Street is an early voting site in central Columbus. It sits in a Somali American area that ICE targeted last December under Operation Buckeye, which the agency said was aimed at “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

“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,” Liliana Rivera Baiman, an organizer with 614 ICE Watch and the Ohio Good Neighbor Network, told WIRED.

Baiman said volunteers have been trained to observe, record and report suspected ICE sightings, then circulate information through dozens of Signal and WhatsApp groups. Signal and WhatsApp are encrypted messaging apps widely used by activists and community groups for rapid coordination.

The Columbus effort is part of a wider election-season response. WIRED said it spoke with a dozen people involved in groups coordinating across the country, including Common Cause, the American Civil Liberties Union, Indivisible, Living United for Change in Arizona and NorCal Resist.

The Department of Homeland Security rejected the premise that ICE is preparing polling-location enforcement. “ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” a DHS spokesperson told WIRED, while adding that ICE could arrest someone if “an active public safety threat endangered a polling location.” ICE and the White House did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.

WIRED reported that President Trump and allies have not ruled out deployments to voting locations during the midterms over the past six months. Asked in May about deploying the National Guard or ICE, Trump said: “I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections. We have to have honest elections.”

Other election officials and specialists told WIRED they doubt a broad federal presence at polls will occur. David Becker, a former Justice Department trial attorney who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said at a media briefing: “ICE and troops will not be at the polls.”

The concern is acute in immigrant communities, according to advocates quoted by WIRED. Beatriz Lopez, executive director of Voto Latino, said her group will run an Election Day war room to identify and debunk viral disinformation, while also preparing for possible ICE activity away from polling sites.

The organizing draws on earlier digital training. WIRED reported that more than 200,000 people logged into an “Eyes on Ice” Zoom session in January, days after Alex Pretti was shot and killed in Minneapolis, to learn how to record immigration-enforcement activity.