Almost two weeks into early voting in Florida, reports of federal immigration enforcement agents appearing at polling places have stoked fears across the state, even as elections officials and fact-checkers say there is no evidence of any coordinated campaign to intimidate voters.
Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles were spotted outside an early voting site in Tallahassee. In a separate incident in Key Largo, masked agents reportedly conducted an operation near a polling site, which the Monroe County Supervisor of Elections just completed an investigation on.
In an interview on WLRN's South Florida Roundup on Friday, Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Mark Earley, said he contacted the FBI after the Tallahassee report. The investigation revealed a far more mundane explanation: the agents were simply there to vote.
"They were just there trying to vote before they got sent out of Florida," Earley said. "They wouldn't be here for Election Day."
Earley said the episode would have been less alarming had federal officials publicly stated from the outset that there would be no immigration presence at the polls. Instead, what he called the administration's "maybe" responses have stoked fears among voters and left local election officials scrambling to reassure the public.
"What we've been hearing behind the scenes is just the opposite," Earley said. "That there would be absolutely no presence in any coordinated manner."
Amy Sherman, a senior correspondent for PolitiFact, has been tracking the issue and put the likelihood bluntly — "Highly, highly unlikely" — during Friday's South Florida Roundup show with host Tim Padgett.
READ MORE: Elections officials probe report of federal immigration agents outside Key Largo polling site
"The numbers don't make sense," Sherman said. "There's about 100,000 voting sites. There are not anywhere close to that number of ICE agents."
Beyond logistics, Sherman pointed to longstanding legal guardrails. Federal law bans troops at the polls unless there is something akin to a foreign invasion — "which I do not see happening either," she noted. Separately, federal and state voter intimidation laws apply to everyone, from police officers to ICE agents to campaign workers.
"The other big guardrail is we have so many ways to vote now," Sherman added. "In Florida, absentee ballots went out in late September. In Broward, we have two weeks of early voting. It would not be realistic for ICE to shut down all their activity and pivot to entirely going to voting sites."
Despite the reassurances, the fears carry real consequences — particularly for Latino communities that have borne the brunt of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement dragnet over the past two years.
Speaking on WLRN's South Florida Roundup, Jared Nordlund, Florida state director for the Latino civil rights nonprofit UnidosUS, said the fear is genuine but argued it may be backfiring.
"Latino voters and families across the country are probably more awake than ever to go vote," Nordlund said. "They've seen in the past two years there's been a big bait and switch when it came to what people voted for in 2024 with the president."
Nordlund pointed to economic pressures — rising gas and food prices — alongside immigration enforcement as key drivers pushing Latino voters to the polls and away from the Republican Party. He described visiting small business owners in Doral — home to the largest Venezuelan migrant enclave in the United States — who are on the brink of closing because customers are too afraid to go out.
"People are showing up to go vote, and they want to go do it early," Nordlund said.
Listen above to the Oct. 30, 2026, interview with Politifact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley, and UnidosUS Florida State Director Jared Nordlund on the South Florida Roundup with Tim Padgett and find The South Florida Roundup wherever you get your podcasts.
