MAGA media personality Steve Bannon has given an ominous warning, linking the new presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at airports to what could happen in the midterm elections.
Bannon, who served as White House chief strategist during President Donald Trump’s first term, has been pushing for ICE agents to show up at the polls in November.
“We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen,” Bannon, who has falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, said on his War Room podcast in February.
Bannon called Trump’s deployment of ICE to bustling airports amid a partial government shutdown that has caused travel delays a “test run” for the midterms.
“We can use what’s happening with these ICE helping out at the airports,” Bannon said in a clip from his podcast that was circulating Monday. He told MAGA figure Mike Davis, “We can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections, sir?”
Davis replied: “Yeah, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places because if you’re an illegal alien, you can’t vote.”
“They’re trained to, wait for it, check IDs. That’s why it’s perfect training for the fall of 2026,” Bannon said, calling it “another 5D chess move from President Trump.”
“We’re tired of having elections stolen, so ICE is gonna be there in the fall of ‘26, just like they are in the airports today,” the MAGA podcast host said.
When previously asked about Bannon’s push to have ICE at the polls during the midterm elections, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “That’s not something I’ve ever heard the president consider. No.”
“I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November. I mean, that’s frankly a very silly hypothetical question. But what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations,” Leavitt said.
Trump warned on Truth Social Saturday that if Democratic lawmakers didn’t agree to a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which the TSA falls under, he would “move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.”
ICE agents were seen by the Associated Press patrolling terminals at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International, John F. Kennedy International in New York, Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, George Bush Intercontinental in Houston and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International on Monday.
Democrats have been refusing to fund the Homeland Security Department for more than a month in a fight to reform ICE and Customs and Border Protection following the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January.