ICE Bought Robot Dogs That Open Doors. DHS Just Said ICE Can Walk Into Polling Places.

ICE is spending two million dollars on robot dogs that can open doors.They’re called Spot, made by Boston Dynamics. Four legs, 360-degree cameras, sensors that sniff for gas and radiation, and an arm on top that turns a handle. Homeland Security posted the request like it was ordering office chairs.A senior DHS official promised the robots will not be used to make arrests. ICE calls them “an additional tool to safely assess potentially dangerous situations,” which means the machine goes in first and the men come in behind it. And nobody has ever bought a dog specifically because it can open a door.Boston Dynamics says any attempt to weaponize its robots is “strictly prohibited.” Fantastic. Legally binding as a sign at the pool that says no diving.Three weeks ago I told you Homeland Security was buying twenty million dollars in electric shock gloves for ICE. The ones whose own manual says do not use them on children, on pregnant women, on the elderly, or on disabled people. Gloves in August. Dogs in September. At a certain point that stops being a series of purchases and starts being an arsenal.New York tried police robot dogs and killed the program because the public couldn’t stand them. The Secret Service walked a few around Mar-a-Lago in 2024. Thoroughly field tested, mostly at a golf course.ICE arrested roughly fifty thousand people last month, and fifty thousand the month before. Highest totals the agency has ever put up, from the people who keep telling you they’re only going after the worst of the worst.All of which sounds like an immigration story. It was, right up until February.A Homeland Security official got on a call with secretaries of state and told them, “any suggestion that ICE will be present at any polling location is simply not true.” Flat. No conditions.Yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stood in front of cameras in New York and said ICE will go into polling places if there’s a threat, or if they’re serving a warrant. His exact words were, “If we’re serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be.”That’s not a denial, my dude. That’s a door.And Mullin never said who decides what counts as a threat. Not the state. Not the county. Not the people running the polling place. The department that shows up decides, and the president it answers to has spent months announcing Democrats are going to cheat in November. The threat assessment is written by men who already published the conclusion.In July, House Democrats found out that while DHS officials swore to Congress there were no plans, DHS attorneys told a federal court the department might be holding thousands of documents on the subject.So add it up. A weapon that leaves no burn and no scar. A machine with a camera and an arm that opens doors. An agency arresting fifty thousand people a month. And the man running it, sixty two days out, saying they will be wherever they decide they need to be.If you have been telling yourself none of this reaches you, they just told you where they’ll be on November third.Sources:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/ice-buy-robot-dogs-immigration-enforcement-rcna594897https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6058739-ice-robot-dogs-2-million-plans/https://apnews.com/article/ice-electric-shock-gloves-85ff746d3e0ee5f39e7a9a3f1f576252https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-arrests-50-thousand-people-august-continuing-record-rcna595510https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/dhs-official-promises-federal-immigration-agents-polling-places-130511882https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dhs-no-plans-ice-polls-midterm-elections-rcna595594https://democrats-homeland.house.gov/news/correspondence/thompson-correa-ramirez-demand-dhs-turn-over-records-on-potential-ice-deployment-to-polling-places Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe