U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed a vehicle in the parking lot of a West Side voting location Wednesday morning, according to eyewitnesses.
During the incident, which stemmed from a Department of Public Safety traffic stop at around 8:45 a.m. in front of the Las Palmas Branch Library, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar arrived on the scene and told the federal agents to vacate the polling place, according to witnesses. ICE personnel already appeared to be in the process of leaving when Salazar showed up.
The enforcement action at the San Antonio polling station comes amid heightened concerns from political observers that President Trump may try to use ICE to intimidate voters during what’s expected to be a damaging midterm election cycle for his political party.
Even so, eyewitnesses at the scene said they saw no indication that the ICE agents approached or questioned anyone there to vote.
The Current reached out to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, ICE’s San Antonio Field Office and Texas DPS for comment on the incident but has so far received no response.
A DPS trooper pulled over a male driver in a blue pickup truck on Wednesday morning, and the man pulled into the Las Palmas Public Library parking lot, witness Diana Castillo Perez told the Current.
Approximately two minutes after the traffic stop began, nine ICE officers “appeared out of nowhere” and swarmed the vehicle, Perez said. Most were in plainclothes and wore bulletproof vests with the word “Police” emblazoned on the front and back.
“It was all types of vehicles,” Perez said of the cars ICE agents arrived in. “Some of them had Spurs and alien stickers on them.”
Press reports from ICE enforcement operations in Minneapolis earlier this year suggest that agency personnel put bumper stickers with progressive political messages on their vehicles to blend in.
According to Perez, two of the suspected ICE agents scanned the man’s face with a phone, and the DPS trooper placed the man in the back of his squad car before leaving the scene.
Democratic Bexar County District Attorney candidate Jane Davis also arrived shortly after DPS left with the arrested suspect. She said it was inappropriate for ICE agents to conduct enforcement outside an active voting location.
“You can’t have MAGA or ICE coming into polling places and intimidating voters,” Davis told the Current. “If they want to arrest somebody and they have a warrant, they can do it somewhere else.”
Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert said Sheriff’s Office officials told him the suspect was pulled over on a felony burglary warrant. Even so, the decision by ICE agents to conduct their work in the parking lot of a polling place displayed “bad training and bad judgment.”
“It’s a demonstration of illegal cowboy justice,” Calvert said.
Digital Editor Stephanie Koithan also contributed to this report.
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