From heat maps to Signal chats to war rooms, volunteers across the US are ready to act if federal immigration agents show up on Election Day. The Franklin County board of elections building at 1700 Morse Street in central Columbus, Ohio, is an early voting site for next week's midterms . It is also located in the middle of the large Somali American community that was targeted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's Operation Buckeye last December. The campaign was designed, the agency said, to find "the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens." The result was a paltry number of arrests, months of sustained harassment, and a lingering feeling that ICE agents could return at any minute, especially around election time.

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The Trump administration keeps threatening to send federal agents to oversee elections. State and local officials are preparing, and even gaming out what happens if they're arrested. Last week, as President Donald Trump prepared to leave the White House on his way to China for a state visit, he was asked if he would be willing to deploy troops from the National Guard or agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to polling locations during November's midterms. "I would do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections," Trump responded . Trump's comments are the latest in a litany of confusing and sometimes contradictory statements from his administration about the possibility of deploying federal agents to oversee the elections.