Organizers in Arizona’s Latino communities gathered this month to train residents as neighborhood election observers, driven in part by warnings from the Department of Justice that it intends to send election monitors to Arizona and other swing states. At sessions billed as “Congreso 2026,” trainers concentrated on practical steps volunteers should take if the National Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agents show up at polling locations, and pressed the point that local action will be necessary to preserve turnout.
A LUCHA leader speaks at the Congreso 2026 poll-observer training in Phoenix, addressing community members about neighborhood election observing.
“The threats facing our democracy are not theoretical,” Vivian Serafin, a member of Living United for Change in Arizona, told reporters at a roundtable held alongside the training. The sessions, organized by LUCHA and the Arizona Center for Empowerment, were held in Phoenix’s heavily Latino Maryvale neighborhood and in Tucson. Between the two events, LUCHA said, more than 250 people attended and received instruction intended to prepare them to act on Election Day.
In a west Phoenix reception hall where weddings and quinceañeras are often held, organizers projected a heat map that overlaid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity across Maricopa County with past and planned polling locations. The map, trainers said, showed that legislative districts with large Hispanic populations have experienced more frequent ICE enforcement operations, and that many of those operations occurred near existing or anticipated polling sites — a pattern that shaped the content of the trainings.
A trainer points to a projected map of reported enforcement and polling locations during a Congreso 2026 session on how observers should respond if federal agents appear at voting sites.
Organizers also placed recent enforcement actions and their deadly consequences at the front of the conversation: one segment of the training included a memorial for people who were shot and killed by immigration agents in recent months. LUCHA’s executive director, Alejandra Gomez, framed the preparations as a response not only to deployments of observers but to an administration she said has embraced election-related conspiracy theories and taken steps to remove key election administration officials ahead of the midterms. “The Trump administration is laser-focused on making it harder for regular folk to vote,” Gomez told reporters. “They want chaos, because chaos suppresses turnout.” She added, “We are not being dramatic — we are reading the signals. We are here because democracy is not protected by hope alone. It is protected by people.”
Organizers described Congreso 2026 as an effort to convert concern into action and to give neighbors the information they need to defend voters in their communities. “That way, when elections happen, they are able to defend voters in their neighborhood,” Gina Mendez, one of the event organizers, said. Much of the practical discussion centered on how volunteers should observe, document and escalate incidents involving federal agents or uniformed personnel at polling locations or ballot drop boxes.
Trainers designed scenarios intended to push participants to plan for rapid, high-pressure responses. Karime Rodriguez of the Arizona Center for Empowerment, who helped design the exercises, described one tabletop scenario in which trainees began responding to the arrival of the National Guard and were then told that ICE would be coming as well. “I really wanted that to be a solemn moment,” Rodriguez said of the exercise. The scenario, trainers said, reflected rhetoric from the White House: the former president has publicly said he is willing to send both the National Guard and ICE to polling sites, and the administration has not ruled out such deployments when asked directly. As a bright yellow slide labeled “The Situation” flashed on the screen, attendees broke into small groups, scribbling on butcher paper to draft plans, anticipate challenges and assign roles.
Participants raised operational questions as they worked through the exercises: would broadcast and social platforms be used to suppress coverage or misrepresent events, and how could observers get around that? Would National Guard troops follow orders to intervene at polling places, and how would volunteers document actions while preventing escalation? Trainers emphasized a three-part approach they summarized as “observe, report and activate,” urging observers not to freeze if confronted with an unexpected federal presence but to rely on neighbors and prearranged plans.
The trainings come against a backdrop of legislative and enforcement developments. Earlier this year, state lawmakers considered a bill that would have required Arizona’s 15 counties to enter agreements with ICE to station agents at polling places and ballot drop boxes during primary and midterm elections; the proposal died without a formal hearing. Organizers also pointed to incidents outside Arizona: in New York, a poll worker was recently confronted by ICE agents over a social media post critical of the agency, an episode trainers used to illustrate how enforcement activity can bleed into electoral contexts.
Organizers stressed the practical timing of their work: early voting for the primary had already started at the time of the trainings, with the last day to mail in ballots set for July 14 and in-person voting available through Election Day on July 21. For LUCHA and its partners, the immediate objective of Congreso 2026 was to ensure that neighborhood observers know how to act under pressure, document interactions with federal personnel and help keep voters in their communities from being deterred or intimidated.
The sessions combined tactical instruction with community organizing: attendees left with checklists, role assignments and contact trees intended to be used if federal agents or troops appear at polling locations. As organizers move forward, they emphasized that the trainings are meant to build local capacity — preparing people to support one another and to marshal quick responses on Election Day if unusual enforcement activity occurs near where their neighbors vote.
Conecta Arizona reported that the July 12 Phoenix gathering drew about 500 community members, who also celebrated unity under the theme that "joy is a form of resistance" while creating neighborhood support networks to counter potential interference and ensure safe access at the polls.
On July 7, 2026, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced it would deploy election monitors to 15 jurisdictions across six states — Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia — saying the teams would monitor polling sites for compliance with federal civil‑rights laws.
Also on July 7, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon sent letters to election officials in all 50 states warning that election officers who knowingly retain noncitizens on voter rolls or facilitate noncitizen voting could face criminal prosecution; Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes responded to the letters calling them intimidation and said he would stand by county recorders.
Separately, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit on January 6, 2026, against Arizona (and Connecticut) alleging the states failed to produce full voter registration lists when requested, a recent enforcement action organizers pointed to as part of the broader federal scrutiny motivating local trainings.