The 2018 election ushered in a wave of voting rights victories. Voters in Florida, Michigan, Maryland, and Nevada all made it easier to register and vote, showing that voters reject voter suppression efforts and bogus “voter fraud” myths. But politicians in several states are now trying to undercut these hard-fought wins.

Last month, Michigan voters passed a voter modernization package, Proposal 3, by a massive 67-33 percent margin. Proposal 3, championed by the Promote the Vote MI coalition and backed by the ACLU of Michigan, helped expand access to the ballot by enacting no-excuse absentee voting, automatic voter registration, and same-day voter registration for the two-week period prior to an election, including Election Day.

But some state lawmakers in Michigan want to undermine the voters’ clear choice during the lame duck session. There, politicians are trying to pass legislation restricting access to same-day voter registration in the final 14 days prior to an election before a voting-rights supporter is sworn in as governor. 

They are not alone, as lawmakers in Wisconsin want to curtail the early voting period in their state and reduce the powers of newly elected state officials, and North Carolina legislators are using the lame duck session to add new barriers to the ballot box. In November, Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment to restore voting eligibility to people with prior felony convictions with nearly two-thirds of the vote. But politicians are trying to slow-walk issuing guidance to county election supervisors on registering people with prior felony convictions to vote.

In Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp used a wave of practices to make it harder for voters to retain their rights and access the ballot box, misusing his office to suppress the vote in the hotly contested gubernatorial contest, where he was the Republican nominee. In response, the new leadership of the U.S. House announced that they plan to look into voter disenfranchisement in Georgia and other states as part of a restored subcommittee on elections.

Yet despite these attempts to thwart the will of voters, there were other voting rights victories that didn’t receive the attention they deserve. 

In Arizona, which had one of the most hotly contested secretary of state races in the country, a candidate who campaigned on taking voter suppression into overdrive, Steve Gaynor, went down in defeat. Gaynor said he opposed the printing of ballots and election materials in languages other than English, a direct attack on protections covered by the Voting Rights Act. If his agenda went into effect, close to one million voters in Arizona would be affected. But voters rejected Gaynor’s attacks on the right to vote and instead elected his opponent Katie Hobbs, who vocally opposed new voting restrictions, to the office.

Voters also showed that they are not willing to put up with politicians’ partisan gerrymandering schemes, which make elections less competitive and carve up communities into misshapen districts. While redistricting is a necessary process to make sure that members of Congress and state legislatures represent districts with proportional populations, oftentimes politicians use the process to make elections safer for incumbents or members of certain parties.

In Utah, voters passed the Better Boundaries initiative, a crucial victory by a bipartisan coalition who urged that redistricting be the responsibility of an independent commission rather than partisan politicians. The success of this effort in a traditionally conservative state shows that voting rights measures can find support among Americans of all political persuasions, and Utahns weren’t the only ones to approve redistricting reform this year.

Voters in Colorado, Michigan, and Missouri also passed redistricting reform ballot measures. And in North Carolina, a state Supreme Court justice who voted to uphold the state’s racially gerrymandered legislative map lost to a voting rights activist.

And to top it all off, the country’s most prominent voter suppression crusader, Kris Kobach, was defeated in his campaign for governor of Kansas. 

These voting rights victories should be a reminder to politicians that they need to listen to their own voters who want their right to the ballot protected, not diminished. As Kemp’s opponent Stacey Abrams said following the election, Americans must commit to defending the principle of free and fair elections even in the face of voter suppression because “the antidote to injustice is progress.”

Brian Tashman, Political Researcher and Strategist, ACLU

Peter Sean Brown is a U.S. citizen who lives in the Florida Keys. He was born in Philadelphia and has lived in Florida for 10 years. Before this year, he had never heard of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

That changed abruptly in April, when the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office held him in jail so that ICE could try to deport him — even though he’s a U.S. citizen. The ACLU, the ACLU of Florida, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP filed a lawsuit this week against the sheriff’s office for violating Peter’s Fourth Amendment rights. His experience — being locked in jail away from his family, friends, and job to facilitate an illegal deportation — is a stark example of what can go wrong when local law enforcement does ICE’s bidding. 

The saga began when Peter reported to the Monroe County Sheriff’s office for violating probation with a low-level, marijuana-related offense. Instead of quickly releasing him, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office told Peter that they were keeping him locked up to facilitate his deportation. ICE had faxed a request, known as a “detainer,” asking the sheriff to lock Peter up, so it could deport him to Jamaica.

Peter was terrified. He knew almost nothing about Jamaica, having only visited the country once on a cruise. And yet Monroe County jail officers told him he was being sent to a Jamaican prison.

Peter started frantically telling jail officers he was a U.S. citizen and asked to show them his birth certificate. He filed multiple written grievances. He called ICE, but no one ever answered the phone. His manager at work called the jail attesting to Peter’s citizenship.

Jail officers ignored him entirely. None of them helped him cancel the detainer or even looked into his claims, even though the jail’s own records listed Peter as a U.S. citizen. Many officers even mocked him, telling him in a Jamaican accent that everything was “gonna be alright.” Officers sang him the theme song to the TV show the Fresh Prince of Bel Air—“West Philadelphia born and raised”—after he repeatedly told them he was from Philadelphia and had no ties to Jamaica.

The officers told Peter that their practice was to hold everyone that ICE asks for, no matter what. In fact, the sheriff himself announced his enthusiastic support for ICE’s deportation policies in a press conference earlier this year. Following his lead, his officers told Peter that it didn’t matter what evidence Peter had. If ICE wanted to deport him, they would oblige.

After Peter filed a second written complaint, the sheriff’s office made clear it was holding him regardless. Its written response read, “It is not up to us to determine the validity of the ICE hold. That is between you, your attorney and ICE.”

This nightmare lasted for weeks, until the moment finally came when the sheriff did turn him over to ICE. Peter was taken to an ICE facility in Miami. He was days from being put on a plane when ICE finally agreed to look at his birth certificate. When ICE realized Peter was, in fact, a U.S. citizen, the agency quickly released him, leaving him in Miami without even offering transportation home to Key West.

Peter’s frightening story should make sheriffs and police chiefs think twice before agreeing to hold people for ICE. In recent years, ICE has asked local jails to hold hundreds (if not thousands) of U.S. citizens for deportation. Each one probably felt the same panic as Peter. Study after study has documented this troubling pattern of targeting U.S. citizens with ICE detainers.

By facilitating these efforts, local sheriffs are putting themselves on the hook for enormous financial liability. Dozens of them have faced costly litigation and been forced to pay six-figure settlements because of their collaboration with ICE. Monroe County is just the latest in a long string of counties that have violated people’s rights at ICE’s request. And ICE does not reimburse any of these expenses.

Funneling people to ICE also facilitates an ever-more-arbitrary deportation system. The Trump administration is targeting people who have lived in the United States for decades, sometimes their entire lives. It has plucked parents off the street in front of their children, canceled protections for people who grew up here, and taken status away from people who fled wars and natural disasters 30 years ago. Just like Peter, their families, homes, and careers are in the United States. The cruelty of deporting them is hard to overstate.

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Sheriffs do not have to abet these efforts. They all have a choice. They can focus on solving crimes and serving the needs of their own communities. Or they can spend scarce time and jail space responding to ICE’s detention requests, and face whatever financial consequences may result.

Peter’s story should prompt the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office to reconsider its choice to join ICE’s runaway deportation force. It should also serve as a warning to other law enforcement to stay out of the deportation business. It’s simply not worth the financial and human cost.

Spencer Amdur, Staff Attorney, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project