Masked agents of the state are whisking people off of American streets. What was once a limited practice for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounding up suspected gang members or drug dealers, masking has now become commonplace for ICE agents. And as the practice has become increasingly prevalent, it has become the subject of heated debate between those who defend it as necessary to protect the safety of ICE officers and critics who argue that it is dangerous and downright creepy—if not authoritarian.
“The use of face masks by ICE officers is, for the most part, unprecedented, and it is a symptom of this administration’s focus on indiscriminate interior enforcement of federal immigration laws—mass deportation as an agenda,” Nayna Gupta of the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit that advocates for migrants, told The Dispatch in an interview. “The use of face masks and plainclothes—these are symptoms of authoritarian regimes because it is a clear indicator of an erosion of the rule of law.”
Historically, aside from the COVID era, few ICE agents wore masks besides “special response teams”—the SWAT units of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—according to Jason Houser, who served in a variety of roles at DHS during the Obama and Biden administrations. “It wasn’t dominant to use facial coverings to protect [identity],” Houser told The Dispatch.
Masking has been legal for the simple reason that no federal statute prohibits it. “Congress and the Federal Courts have deferred in expansive manner to the enforcement tools and tactics that federal immigration agencies use,” Gupta said. “This left the door wide open for an agency like DHS and a sub-agency like ICE to resort to using a tactic like this without being in direct violation of the law.”
Though there could be Fourth Amendment challenges to the use of masks by officers detaining suspected illegal immigrants, it’s not clear how the courts would rule if anyone ever challenged the use of masking given this is a matter of civil immigration enforcement against non-citizens. “Identification is a core protective measure for the [Fourth Amendment] rights of people at the ground level,” Gupta said, “and face masks without other identification undermine the ability of people to assert core constitutional rights.”
Opponents also contend that the use of masks and plainclothes by ICE agents increases the risk of criminals impersonating officers. In January, a man impersonating an ICE officer was arrested in North Carolina for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman after threatening to deport her if she did not have sex with him. A similar incident occurred in New York in February. While it is certainly possible to impersonate an unmasked ICE agent with a badge—the alleged perpetrator in North Carolina presented nothing more than a business card with a badge printed on it—masks and plainclothes make impersonation easier. In August, the Democratic Women’s Caucus sent a letter to DHS demanding that ICE agents “visibly and clearly identify themselves when conducting immigration enforcement activities to stop enabling impersonators who leverage women’s uncertainty and fear of immigration consequences to rape, harass, and abuse them.”
Democratic members of Congress have also introduced legislation that would generally prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks and plainclothes while making arrests. “We should not have armed, masked, and unidentified individuals prowling around neighborhoods and snatching people off the street. This conduct poses a great risk for everyone involved, from the officers themselves to well-intentioned bystanders who may misunderstand the situation,” Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, an original sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. He noted that local police and other law enforcement officials routinely carry out their duties without wearing masks. The legislation would require ICE agents to visibly identify themselves.
But Trump administration officials argue that the unprecedented use of masks is necessary because ICE agents face unprecedented threats. “When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13, criminal rings, murderers, and rapists,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The Dispatch. (Gupta of the American Immigration Council said her organization has heard that “officers have not made clear what agency they’re with and … language barriers add to that confusion.”)
“I don’t particularly like masks, but the ICE officers need the mask because their families are being doxed,” White House border czar Tom Homan told reporters last week. “Believe me, I know, because I’m a victim of it. Their families are being doxed, their children are being doxed, their families have been put in harm’s way.”
An attack in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4 underscored the seriousness of the threat to ICE agents. Ten people were charged with attempted murder for luring ICE agents out of a detention facility before gunmen opened fire. A local police officer was shot in the neck during the attack. A few days later, another gunman opened fire at Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where a local police officer was shot in the knee, and two others, a Border Patrol officer and employee, were injured by shattered glass. In August, an anti-ICE mob attacked agents outside a San Francisco courthouse. According to DHS, one man who was charged with assault of a federal officer explicitly threatened ICE agents by saying, “I’m going to go after your family,” and “I’m going to stab you.”
Houser, who served as chief of staff at ICE during the Biden administration, told The Dispatch that doxing ICE agents has become “pretty prevalent,” based on nonpartisan cybersecurity reports he has seen. While doxing might justify the use of masking, he blamed the mass-deportation agenda of the Trump administration for fueling anger toward ICE. “If there is doxing and targeting going on, officers and their families need to be protected,” he said. “Quotas [for deportation] drive people to be angry because they don’t see that as a fair application of the law. Then officers are targeted, then they have to wear masks.”
He also argued that the use of plainclothes also presents some danger to ICE agents. “When you have plainclothes individuals out there in hoodies and blue jeans that their wives bought them at Kohl’s and non-conforming tactical gear, that officer’s at risk,” he told The Dispatch. Masks and plainclothes also raise the very real risk to ICE agents of what might happen if they accidentally tried to detain a U.S. citizen legally carrying a handgun, who would reasonably fear that anyone accosting him in a mask and plainclothes is a criminal.
But with the administration pushing full-speed ahead with its deportation agenda—200,000 people were deported in the first seven months of the Trump administration—there’s no sign that the practice of masking will abate any time soon.
