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President Donald Trump has said he’s willing to “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” including sending federal agents to voting locations.
And during his confirmation hearing in March, Mullin said he’d be willing to send ICE agents if there’s a “specific threat.”
“The only reason why my officers would be there is if there was a specific threat for them to be there, not for intimidation,” Mullin said at the time. “I can’t sit here and guarantee hypothetically what threat might be there or not.”
Hunt cited the hearing, asking, “Are you willing to rule out sending ICE agents to the polls?”
“No, what I said is that we would only be there if a threat is arised [sic],” Mullin answered.
“So you’re not ruling it out?” Hunt asked.
“No, keep in mind, why would ICE be there?” Mullin asked. “Because the only people who should be voting there is American citizens. There shouldn’t be any immigration enforcement. So this should be a moot deal for any Democrat.”
“So, why would there be a circumstance where you would need ICE agents?” Hunt pressed.
“Keep in mind, ICE agents are there to flex if we need to,” Mullin said, continuing:
So you saw ICE at TSA lines, not processing, but in the soft areas. If a threat were to arise for whatever reason at a polling station — say a bomb threat would be called in — our ICE agents are more than just Immigration And Customs Enforcement. They’re also trained to have SRT (Special Response Teams), which means that we can have an emergency team respond quickly. The only reason why we would be there is not for voter identification. It’d be because law enforcement is needed, and the local law enforcement would be part of that conversation. So we wouldn’t show up on our own. We would be getting asked to show up but not for immigration purposes, because, as I said, the only people that should be in line are American citizens. So there should be no reason to have any type of that.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
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