US homeland security chief warns of lone terror attacks at election poll sites

The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has warned that one of the top threats facing the US in the lead-up to November’s presidential election are “lone offenders” aiming to disrupt voting and other public targets.

“In the aftermath of 9/11 the most prominent terrorism-related threat facing our nation was that of sophisticated foreign terrorist networks,” Mayorkas said in a keynote speech at a closed-door conference, hosted by the Soufan Center in New York.

He added: “But today another prominent and challenging terrorism-related threat facing the United States is the lone offenders.”

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In a Manhattan location near where the iconic twin towers once stood, Mayorkas said these types of domestic threat actors “do not necessarily need a hijacked 757” to commit terrorism, but instead go after “schools and campuses, houses of worship, grocery stores, hospitals, polling places, election workers and law enforcement officers”.

“These are individuals who have been radicalized to violence based on ideologies of hate, anti-government sentiment, conspiracy theories or personal grievances,” he said, describing what are largely the ideologies of rightwing extremists. “In our modern, heightened terrorism threat environment, any locality, anywhere, can be a target at any time.”

Mayorkas’s words come against the backdrop of a US election that is playing out amid widespread fears of civil unrest and in which a lone gunman in July tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, though no specific political motive has yet been established for that attack.

His warning also comes after his department designated the certification of the presidential election on 6 January 2025 as a “ national special security event ” commensurate with Super Bowls and presidential inaugurations.

The label comes with a nearly limitless presence of law enforcement aimed at curtailing the type of mass violence that surrounded the last time Congress gathered to certify Joe Biden’s victory on the same date in 2021.

Both the Republican and Democratic national conventions held in July and August, respectively, were given the same security status and saw an increased number of police and Secret Service members in attendance.

Mayorkas also made specific mention of his department providing state and local police with tools to help better ensure the “protection of polling places and election workers”.

National law enforcement agencies have made no secret of their concerns surrounding foreign meddling, domestic terrorists and the threats they pose to the security of the election come November.

Under the Biden administration , the Department of Justice even created an election threats taskforce with the FBI, addressing widespread fears following the turmoil of the 2020 election season.

In a May meeting of that same task force, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, singled out polling workers and other election officials as particularly vulnerable to violence.

“Let me be clear: any threat of violence to an election official, volunteer or staff is completely unacceptable and something the FBI takes very seriously,” he said .

Earlier this year, the Guardian obtained a document showing how Maricopa county in Arizona, where Republicans and rightwing extremists contested the results of the 2020 election as “stolen”, instituted new security measures making their election office a veritable fortress ahead of November.

Mayorkas, a Cuban refugee who has served both Republican and Democratic administrations as a law enforcement official, is a popular figure of scorn among rightwing pundits and politicians who despise the Biden administration’s handling of immigration.

In January, House Republicans attempted to impeach Mayorkas for what was described as his negligence on border security. The bid was widely seen as a political stunt to satisfy the Maga movement and former president Trump. But months later, Senate Democrats shot down the impeachment case as failing to meet the standards of “high crimes and misdemeanors” required to oust the sitting secretary.