Mike Scornavacco, Antioch Township GOP committeeman, said Democratic officials targeting ICE near polling places are substituting political theater for genuine leadership and eroding public trust in both law enforcement and the electoral process.
“That is completely out of line,” Scornavacco told the Lake County Gazette. “ICE is a federal law enforcement agency. They do not answer to local election officials, and they should not. Creating a hotline to report federal agents doing their jobs sends a dangerous message that enforcing the law is somehow wrong. It is not. That kind of rhetoric creates confusion, weakens respect for law enforcement, and encourages people to view lawful authority as something to be resisted instead of respected.”
Bills restricting or banning federal immigration agents from operating near polling sites have been advancing in multiple Democrat-led state legislatures, with backers citing worries about federal interference in elections. Existing statutes already cap the presence of armed personnel at voting locations, and Homeland Security has made clear that dispatching ICE to the polls is not under consideration, according to Stateline.
Testimony before Congress from ICE and Border Patrol commanders replied, “No, sir,” on the question of polling place deployments, with DHS election integrity official Heather Honey adding that claims of agents being sent to the polls are “simply not true.”
With the March 17 primary drawing near, DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek put her opposition on the record in a video saying, “In DuPage County, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will not be allowed to interfere with DuPage County elections in any way.”
In a press release, she followed with, “ICE, go away. Do not even try. You will fail,” with Kaczmarek rejecting as fiction the claim that non-citizens participate in Election Day voting.
A hotline was set up by her office to collect reports of ICE activity near polls, with the county also noting that its “Vote Anywhere” program gives voters access to any of 248 countywide polling locations.
Scornavacco said local officials in Lake County have been running the same playbook as Kaczmarek, targeting enforcement rather than illegal activity.
“It is not subtle,” he said. “Lake County officials like Holly Kim and Eric Reinhardt have repeatedly pushed rhetoric that paints ICE as the problem instead of illegal activity itself. They have used their positions and platforms to go after immigration enforcement and frame it as intimidation rather than law enforcement. That is not leadership. That is political theater.”
In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson pushed forward a plan to ring polling sites with “Democracy Zones” blocking immigration enforcement within 100 feet of voting locations.
Opponents, including 15th Ward Alderman Ray Lopez, said the plan was one that “seeks an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist” and raised potential First Amendment concerns.
“As much as the extreme Democratic Left and Socialists decried President Trump’s election loss conspiracies, they have proven no better,” Lopez told Chicago City Wire. “Actually, the Democratic logic is worse as it appears to build on the allegations of non-citizens participating in our American electoral process and needing protection from deportation.”
The skepticism carried over to social media, where Libs of TikTok said, “If illegals are not voting, then why would anyone care if ICE is near a polling place?”
Scornavacco said officials who single out ICE are not protecting voters — they are signaling that some laws are negotiable.
“When elected officials go out of their way to target ICE, they are not protecting voters,” he said. “They are signaling that certain laws should not be enforced. That creates confusion, weakens respect for the rule of law, and puts politics ahead of public safety. The message is clear. Enforcement is optional, depending on who you are and what narrative is convenient. That is exactly how trust in government and elections gets destroyed.”
Scornavacco said the policies driving the effort are rooted in politics, not voter protection.
“They are politically motivated,” he said. “There are already laws on the books that prevent voter intimidation. We do not need new policies that selectively target one type of law enforcement. This is not about protecting voters. It is about optics and politics, plain and simple.”
Scornavacco said the legal argument being used to justify blocking ICE misreads what those statutes were actually designed to do.
“That argument misrepresents the law,” he said. “Those restrictions are aimed at preventing military involvement in elections, not stopping civilian agencies like ICE from enforcing immigration law. ICE does not lose its authority because it is Election Day. The law does not pause for politics.”
Scornavacco said the timing of the anti-ICE push reveals its true purpose.
“That is exactly what it looks like,” he said. “When you start framing law enforcement as the enemy right before an election, that is not about protecting voters. It is about energizing a base, creating outrage, and controlling a narrative. It is a political strategy dressed up as concern.”
In DuPage County, former GOP committeeman Terry Newsome came close to being turned away at the polls after a database error recorded all five members of his household under the name “Updatesome” instead of Newsome in the voter rolls.
Scornavacco said voter roll problems demand serious attention, not dismissal.
“They should concern everyone,” he said. “Accurate voter rolls and clean records are the foundation of election integrity. When errors happen, they need to be taken seriously and corrected quickly. Ignoring them or downplaying them only makes people trust the system less.”
Kaczmarek’s conduct drew sharp rebukes from conservative critics beyond the ICE dispute. Former state representative Jeanne Ives called her “completely incompetent,” while election integrity advocate Carol Davis said that Kaczmarek is “throwing red meat to the Democrat base because she is in jeopardy of losing her seat as county clerk.”
The DuPage County Board censured her office in 2025 over a pattern of financial mismanagement that included unpaid vendors, a budget shortfall, and staff salaries that ballooned 40% over five years.
A criminal investigation by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office followed, targeting allegations of roughly $229,000 in no-bid contracts and improper use of election funds.
Kaczmarek was turned out by Democratic primary voters on March 17, with Paula Deacon Garcia defeating her 54,761 to 42,670 in unofficial returns with all precincts reporting.
Garcia will meet Republican Patricia Kladis-Schiappa, who ran unopposed in the GOP primary, in the November general election.
Scornavacco said the path back to public confidence runs through neutrality and consistent enforcement, not messaging.
“When officials inject politics into law enforcement and elections, it makes people question whether the system is being run fairly,” he said. “Confidence comes from neutrality, consistency, and transparency. When those are replaced with messaging and narratives, trust erodes fast.”
Scornavacco closed with a straightforward argument for treating election integrity and immigration enforcement as two sides of the same coin.
“This is not complicated,” he said. “You can support secure elections and support ICE at the same time. In fact, if you care about election integrity, you should support both. A country that enforces its laws is a country that protects its elections. The real threat to confidence is not enforcement. It is selective enforcement, confusion, and political spin. At the end of the day, the law should apply equally to everyone, every day, including Election Day.”
Scornavacco is the Republican precinct committeeman for Precinct 006 in Lake County.
