Masked ICE Agents Are a Danger to Both the Public and Themselves
Masked federal agents have repeatedly grabbed people in immigration raids over the past few weeks. Most seem to be members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but in the moment there is often little to indicate who they are. This presents a danger not only to the public but to the masked agents themselves.
“There is no federal policy dictating when officers can or should cover their faces during arrests,” CNN’s Emma Tucker reported in April, “but historically they have almost always worn them only while performing undercover work to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations.” At the time, masked plainclothes agents with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had recently arrested Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University graduate student from Turkey, on little more justification than her having co-written a student newspaper article critical of Israel.
Rather than expressing any unease about anonymous government agents, prominent Republicans have doubled down. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.) introduced a bill to make “doxxing” federal law enforcement officers a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) endorsed the prospect of letting ICE agents remain anonymous, claiming that otherwise “activists” would “put [agents’] names and faces online.”
That explanation strains credulity. Government operatives, operating on the public’s dime and at least nominally in the public’s interest, are entitled to fewer privacy protections while on the job than the rest of us.
“Law enforcement knows the power of a name, the power of identity, the power of accountability. It insists on all three of those things from the public in almost every interaction,” police officer and former CIA operative Patrick Skinner wrote in The Washington Post in 2020, as masked federal agents were deployed against protesters. “Yet during a time where identity and accountability are needed most—at the time of most tension—law enforcement says it will provide neither.”
Similarly, as Republicans in Congress mulled jail time for anyone who unmasks anonymous law enforcement officers, President Donald Trump posted on social media that “from now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at prot
Article from Reason.com
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