Lawmakers push efforts to ban ICE from wearing masks at Boston legislative summit

Boston Globe

a day ago

ICE officials say agents have been wearing masks to avoid publicly exposing their identities and personal information.
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In a statement to the Globe, a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE officers are facing an 830 percent increase in the number of assaults against them, and condemned efforts to prohibit officers from wearing masks.
'These are repulsive messaging bills that stoke dangerous anti-ICE rhetoric for cheap political points and fundraising emails,' the official said. 'Sanctuary politicians are trying to outlaw officers wearing masks to protect themselves from being doxxed and targeted.'
In early July,
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'With transparency, identification, and reason there should be no need for disguises when performing their duties to the communities they serve,' Hawkins said on Tuesday.
Lawmakers said such legislation is meant to promote accountability for all law enforcement, and would also reduce the chances of law enforcement officers being impersonated.
New York State Senator Patricia Fahy, a Democrat who is sponsoring a similar legislation in New York, said the practice of federal immigration agents arresting and detaining people while wearing masks, plainclothes, and using unmarked cars 'should shock the collective conscience.'
'A dangerous line is being crossed here,' Fahy said. 'Immigration enforcement is really turning into more of a paramilitary type secret police.'
A number of Republican lawmakers
'It's meant for the intimidation of the officer and their families,' said Representative Scott Sharp, a Kentucky Republican and retired law enforcement officer. 'I can't see any other reason to do it.'
Representative Bob Lewis, a Kansas Republican, echoed the sentiment.
'[ICE agents] are acting in an official capacity, not personal,' Lewis said. 'They are doing their jobs.'
Amy Carnevale, the chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party said in a statement that the Massachusetts bill put immigration officers' lives at risk.
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'Far-left activists have doxxed and assaulted ICE officials and agents in the field,' she said.
In Massachusetts, mask-wearing ICE officers provoked
public outcry earlier this year, when agents wearing face coverings whisked Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk off a Somerville street in broad daylight in March —
'I didn't think that they were the police because I had never seen police approach and take someone away like this,' Öztürk wrote.
Federal officials have said in various public statements that immigration agents
When DHS officers conduct operations, they 'clearly identify themselves as law enforcement, while wearing masks to protect themselves' from gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13, the DHS official said, as well as from others who have committed crimes.
'The men and women of ICE put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens,' the statement said.
ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, has strongly
'I'm sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I'm not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don't like what immigration enforcement is,' Lyons said during a June press conference in Boston, where the agency announced that federal officials
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During a trial last month in Boston federal court regarding a lawsuit brought by higher education organizations over the Trump administration's policies of arresting and detaining noncitizen students and pro-Palestinian activists,
Patrick Cunningham, an assistant special agent in charge at the Homeland Security Investigations office in Boston, which is part of ICE, told the court there was no specific policy on masking that he was aware of within the agency. He said it was up to the 'personal choice' of each agents as to whether or not they want to wear face coverings.
'They might wear them because they want to protect their identity,' Cunningham said, particularly in the 'age of camera phones, and the ability of people to identify those agents.'
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at