Federal brokers stroll close to the scene where a man was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer during an operation in the Bronx borough of New York on October 8, 2026, according to native media and police.

Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

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Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

Very early on Wednesday morning, Dover, N.J., Councilwoman Sandra Wittner began getting messages about immigration brokers. A dozen or more were gathering outside a Walgreens, according to the messages she was getting. Throughout the day, neighbors in north New Jersey saw a spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement exercise.

And New Jersey is not alone. In the weeks forward of the midterms, numerous cities and states across the nation are reporting a notable rise in ICE exercise, according to reports gathered by NPR and its member stations.

“The tactics that the administration has been deploying in communities really appear to be designed to try to intimidate voters,” says Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. Despite that, early turnout is surging.

“There was definitely a lot of apprehension and fear,” Wittner recollects. “We just really weren’t sure if something huge was about to happen. People were not feeling very comfortable or safe.”

Wittner is not certain who was detained or where, which is unsurprising: today it’s tough to report on ICE crackdowns as they occur, because the Department of Homeland Security no longer publicly shares well timed info on its operations.

NPR wrote to the company to ask if there has been a latest surge. It responded: “ICE agents uphold our nation’s immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”

And yet NPR and its member stations have obtained suggestions from rural Illinois,Oregon,Detroit andCalifornia about surges in ICE enforcement, all through October.

An official within New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s workplace who was not licensed to communicate publicly confirmed that they have famous a surge in ICE exercise in the metropolis.

“We’re certainly witnessing an uptick in activity, and have been since the summer,” says a member of a volunteer group of neighbors in New York. She requested that NPR not use her identify, as she is nervous about retaliation. Her group goes to the scene where an ICE operation is taking place, paperwork it, reminds these being detained of their rights, and alerts neighbors.

“In the past few weeks we’ve seen numerous large operations, or what we call cluster raids, multiple agents going to one spot and then the next,” she said.

On the other aspect of the nation, Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Troy Brynelson has reported on a related pattern. “What we were seeing in early October and what we’ve seen continue, at least anecdotally throughout this month, is that ICE activity has really picked up in Portland.” Brynelson says it seems to be concentrated in industrial areas. “I’d say it’s a noticeable uptick compared to what we’ve seen over the summer.”

Juan Proaño of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights group says he’s involved because this is taking place so shut to the midterm elections. “It’s not about ICE at the actual polling station, it’s ICE at the perimeter of the polling station,” he says.

“Mass enforcement actions could be away from the polls, but with social media and the news, it could be enough to dissuade somebody from actually going out to vote.”

Weiser of the Brennan Center says there’s no indication the raids are affecting turnout. On the opposite, she says there has been a surge in early voting in minority communities across the nation. “The good news is: it isn’t working. Americans are tuning this out and we are not seeing a significant impact on participation. And we are actually seeing huge surges in participation in communities of color, and in Latino communities, and in all the communities that have been targeted by ICE and DHS.”

Even so, she says that intimidation at the polls is unlawful, and should be reported.