ICE… or snowflakes? State & local officials prepare to ban ICE from hiding behind masks
After Congress failed to enact a ban, state and local lawmakers coast-to-coast are advancing measures that would prevent ICE officers from covering their faces
For months, Democrats have been pushing for a simple reform in Congress. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are going to conduct arrests in public, they should have to show their faces and not hide behind masks — a practice that has led social media users to mock ICE agents as cowardly “snowflakes.” This week, that effort failed. But state and local leaders coast-to-coast are barreling forward anyway with efforts to ban the practice for good.
This week, the annual Department of Homeland Security funding bill passed the U.S. House without a long-sought provision that would have banned ICE agents from wearing masks during enforcement operations, even as images of masked officers detaining people in American cities continue to flood social media and fuel public outrage.
House Democratic leaders openly acknowledged the omission. In closed-door meetings and public remarks, they argued the bill lacked even basic guardrails on an agency they say has grown increasingly unmoored from constitutional norms. Among the reforms that didn’t make the cut: a requirement that ICE agents identify themselves, wear body cameras, obtain judicial warrants, and stop hiding their faces.
I’ll admit that I was frustrated to see Congress blink. But the country isn’t blinking.
In fact, even as federal lawmakers shy away, state and local officials are confronting the issue head on. From California and Washington State to Missouri and New Jersey, lawmakers have recently advanced measures that would force ICE agents to unmask themselves or face penalties. What failed in Congress may soon be decided in courtrooms and city halls across America. And one ruling, expected any day now, could change everything.
Keep your eyes on this “test case” in California.
A federal judge in California is poised to rule any day now on whether to allow the nation’s first statewide ban on masked law enforcement officers — including ICE agents — to take effect. The law, signed last year by Governor Gavin Newsom, bars most officers from concealing their faces during public operations and requires them to display identification.
The Trump administration sued to block it, arguing that states have no authority to regulate federal agents and that forcing ICE officers to unmask would endanger them and their families. But at a recent hearing, where the government warned that letting California proceed would unleash “chaos” nationwide, the presiding judge appeared totally unconvinced.
“Why can’t they perform their duties without a mask?” she asked bluntly. “They did that until 2025, did they not?”
It was such a simple question that you would’ve thought the Trump lawyers had prepared for it. Clearly they didn’t. They struggled to answer and went off on tangents about how outrageous it would be if the state ordered all ICE agents to wear pink shirts. If the law stands, California would become the first state in the country to formally reject anonymous federal policing. Other states are watching closely but not waiting around to take action.
Proposals to ban ICE masks are advancing, coast to coast.
In just the past few weeks, the mask-banning movement appears to be picking up steam, notwithstanding the failure of the U.S. Congress to do anything.
In Massachusetts, lawmakers have filed legislation that would ban masked officers inside courthouses and require federal agents to show judicial warrants before making civil immigration arrests. The goal, sponsors say, is to ensure people aren’t too afraid to show up to court, whether as defendants, witnesses, or victims.
In New Jersey, a bill has advanced that would require all law enforcement officers, including federal agents, to keep their faces uncovered while performing official duties in public. Testimony in support of the measure was pretty raw. Residents describing masked men dragging people off streets while refusing to identify themselves. Such scenes are repeating themselves daily nationwide, making the agency look less like law enforcement and more like criminal abductors.
In Washington state, lawmakers are considering multiple proposals that would bar ICE agents from wearing masks, restrict access to schools and hospitals without judicial warrants, and allow people to sue if they are detained by unlawfully masked officers. Meanwhile in Missouri, officials are weighing local ordinances that would require officers to show their faces and badge numbers.
In each of these cases, residents have been packing hearings, meetings, and town halls to support the mask bans. Their most common complaint is accountability, as Americans worry ICE agents are feeling emboldened to violate people’s rights if those officers feel like they’ll never be identified. But another theme has emerged. Increasingly, Americans are complaining to state and local authorities about ICE impersonators wearing masks in order to commit crimes.
In fact, the FBI warned just before the holidays about a spate of attacks from ICE impersonators and the need for actual ICE officers to do more to identify themselves. Criminals are donning fake uniforms and covering their faces in order to pull of heists and get away with violent assault. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — ICE’s parent organization — doesn’t appear to have listened. So state and local leaders are taking up the cause themselves.
People have no reason to believe the government anymore.
ICE officials insist the masks are about safety — about protecting agents from harassment or retaliation. But I’m going to break decorum in today’s essay by telling you, a little more explicitly than usual, what I think about that claim: it’s total bullshit.
I’ve spent most my professional career working at DHS or overseeing its operations. Never once did anyone inside that 250,000-person Department convey to me that they needed masks to catch more bad guys. Agents managed to investigate, pursue, and detain the world’s most dangerous criminals and terrorists without covering their faces. Until now.
Why is that? Was it a coincidence that agents started buying face coverings and ski masks when Trump returned to power? Was there a year-long cold front I didn’t hear about? Or was it the winds of change coming out of Washington — a president who told agents they had “total authorization” to use “whatever means necessary” to attack their targets?
The real reason is obvious to anyone who’s ever heard of Halloween. Masks don’t just conceal identities. They sever accountability. On that famed October holiday, a costume allows folks to be sillier — to play tricks, to get treats! But in the context of federal law enforcement, it enables the wearer to break the law and get away with it.
Frankly, I’m sick and tired of hearing the third-rate flunkies at DHS and in the Trump administration who assure us that ICE agents are complying with protocol. The hell they are. Every day, they are breaking with long-standing norms, law enforcement procedure, and the Constitution itself by arresting Americans and treating immigrants as if the law doesn’t apply. Former Democrat and Republican officials I talk to — who’ve also overseen DHS — vehemently agree.
If the snowflakes behind the masks don’t want to be called the American “Gestapo,” then they should start acting like they’re not. Because right now, the agency designed to stop terrorist attacks after 9/11 is running around the country in costume, terrorizing Americans. They don’t just look like secret police. They’ve become them. And people are rightfully furious beyond words.
The mask is the metaphor.
Anyone reading this knows the debate isn’t just about face coverings worn by cops. It’s about whether the United States still believes that government power must be exercised openly, or whether we’re willing to tolerate armed agents of the state operating without faces, names, and accountability. I don’t need to paint you a picture of what that future looks like. You’re already seeing it on social media, with videos of ICE agents murdering innocent people and kicking down doors without warrants.
In my mind, there’s a word for police who conceal their identities while detaining civilians. And it ain’t “brave.” It certainly isn’t “law and order.” I’ll let you mentally fill in the blank — because the word I have in mind is too crass to type.
This week, Congress had a chance to draw a line and put the issue to bed. It didn’t. Yet again our elected representatives fell on their unmasked faces. But we’re not going to let Congressional cowardice be the reason our constitutional system is allowed to corrode even further. Thankfully, states and cities are stepping into the vacuum.
Local leaders know that once people stop recognizing law enforcement as legitimate, public trust collapses altogether. They’ve seen it happen in almost every city where policy brutality becomes a flashpoint. And once that happens, no amount of excuses or federal force can restore it.
America has a choice to make. We can be a nation where officers stand behind the rule of law… or one where they hide behind masks. But it can’t be both.
Your friend, in defiance,
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I am angry and embarrassed by Congress's cowardice. The mask issue is, as you say, is just a metaphor for the lawlessness, cruelty, and out-of-control secret police unleashed on the American people by the thugs in the White House.
These are the same creeps that wouldn’t dare wear a mask during the pandemic. They are the lowest of the low in every sense of the word. I hope the states legislation is well written enough as to withstand the court challenges that most certainly will follow.