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New York Post
23 minutes ago
- New York Post
NY Dems aim to de-mask ICE agents to scare them off their raids — NOT to protect the public
Supporters claim a bill introduced by Democratic state lawmakers last month banning ICE agents and police from wearing masks during raids will ensure safety and prevent authoritarianism. One backer, Sen. Patricia Fahy, fumes that ICE is 'operating like masked militias' and 'paramilitary secret police' and so must be reined in. Nonsense: The awkwardly and misleadingly named Mandating End to Lawless Tactics Act is actually little more than an attempt to thwart immigration enforcement by making ICE agents fear for their personal safety. It joins similar efforts in other states and in Congress to 'unmask ICE.' In the words of GOP Sen. George Borrello, 'This bill is driven by ideology, not a genuine concern for public safety.' The Left's hypocrisy on this issue is staggering. Progressives — including many of the MELT Act's supporters in the Legislature — have opposed mask bans for criminal suspects and rioters, such as Nassau County's common-sense ban, which has exceptions for law enforcement. Yet for all their sympathy for those involved with the criminal-justice system, they have no qualms about painting cops as criminals and subjecting them to mask bans. If these lawmakers truly cared about public safety, they'd go after the rioters and real criminals who've routinely hidden their identities to evade accountability following the 2020 George Floyd unrest and Oct. 7 demonstrations. ICE and other law enforcement don't mask up because they have machinations of becoming a 'paramilitary secret police.' They do so to keep themselves and their families safe from multinational gangs such as Tren de Aragua. Facial-recognition technology, now rapidly improving due to AI, gives anyone — including nefarious actors like Antifa or cartel members — the ability to reverse image search the unmasked face of an ICE agent. They can then obtain and post their names, addresses and information about their relatives to social media. While the Justice Department can prosecute those responsible for such doxxing, it is nonetheless a frequent threat to agents and loved ones. Addresses of hotels where agents stay during operations are routinely spread on social media so that protesters can harass them. Agitators are so well-organized that an app was created to report and rush to ICE raid locations, as seen in Los Angeles riots this year. The Department of Homeland Security has reported an 830% increase in assaults on ICE personnel this year, attributed to an increase in doxxing and rhetoric against agents. Worse still, even if the MELT Act passes, its effects would be largely symbolic. Lawmakers like Fahy clearly don't understand federalism. Because the Constitution gives federal law precedence, any federal regulation would immediately supersede the MELT Act if passed, rendering it largely symbolic. Additionally, federal agents are immune from state criminal prosecution when acting within the scope of their authority. The MELT Act would also require that all law enforcement agents display their names or badge numbers on their uniforms, hamstringing the plainclothes units of local New York police departments, which now must only provide this information verbally. Some of the bill's supporters mention a more realistic point that masking without wearing identification might allow for easier impersonation of ICE officers. They might also argue that a lack of masking deters possible police misconduct, despite the widespread use of body cameras. Those are valid concerns. But there are ways to protect the public even with masked law enforcement. Public-education campaigns should remind residents that ICE agents and other law enforcement are legally required to identify themselves as police as soon as it is practicable and safe to do so. New Yorkers under arrest should keep in mind their constitutional protections, such as the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Masked or not, imposters can still pose as ICE or any other law-enforcement officers. Requiring names or badge numbers does nothing if there's no reliable way to immediately verify the person's legitimacy. The answer isn't a largely symbolic law to neuter real agents; it's to strengthen identification through local cooperation. The only way to fully reassure New Yorkers is cooperation between local police and ICE, whether via collaborative task forces, such as through the federal 287(g) program already adopted by several counties, or by having nearby officers accompany raids to keep public order, which would help quickly debunk any imposters. This type of public partnership would not be a political statement about immigration, rather a commonsense way to put the public at ease and ensure all involved in raids are safe. The MELT Act is symbolic theater that punishes law enforcement while doing nothing to realistically stop imposters. New Yorkers would be safer if lawmakers scrapped this bill and instead fostered real cooperation between local police and ICE to deter fraud and protect both the public and the agents doing dangerous work. Paul Dreyer is a cities policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Russiagate scandal demands prosecutions, overhaul of the FBI and CIA
Once again, newly released documents and damning evidence conclusively substantiate what many Americans have long suspected. Russiagate was a conspiracy — hatched, implemented and relentlessly promoted by top officials in the CIA, FBI and across the Obama-Biden-Clinton political machine to rig a presidential election and undermine a duly elected president. It also corrupted the very institutions essential to protecting American liberty. Despite the mountain of evidence and exhaustive investigations, those responsible for this travesty remain unpunished. Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, among other intelligence officials, have lied to Congress and the American public about their reliance on the discredited Steele dossier — a report paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC — while simultaneously engineering different versions of critical intelligence assessments to cover their tracks. Although the intelligence community and its leaders publicly maintained that the notorious dossier played no role in the official assessment concerning ' Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,' newly declassified oversight reviews flatly contradict these claims. The record shows that Brennan and Clapper prepared a classified, compartmented version of the assessment specifically for President Obama and senior officials, which cited the dossier to bolster key judgments about Russian election interference. Later, when sanitized versions were released to Congress and the public, all references to the dossier had been scrubbed away. Special Counsel John Durham's investigation verified that Brennan, Clapper, then-Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey were all briefed, even before the 2016 election, on the Clinton campaign's plan to concoct a false Trump-Russia narrative. Still, the FBI — with full knowledge that the Steele dossier was riddled with falsehoods — deployed it to secure baseless FISA warrants against Trump advisor Carter Page and launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation (the FBI'S codename for the operation), with the intent of sabotaging Trump's campaign and subsequent presidency. Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act litigation exposed much of this corruption years before the Durham report. Court-obtained documents, such as the 'electronic communication' that launched Crossfire Hurricane, revealed the flimsy and third-hand nature of the intelligence used as pretext. Other records uncovered by Judicial Watch showed how high-ranking Justice Department officials, such as Bruce Ohr, maintained close ties with Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, acting as a conduit for anti-Trump smears even after Steele was fired as an informant by the FBI for leaking to the media. Ohr's communications disclosed that so-called 'intelligence' on Trump-Russia ties was being laundered to the Clinton campaign and other government insiders. It goes deeper. Declassified supplements to the Durham report lay out how activists tied to George Soros' Open Society Foundations, aided by operatives within the Obama FBI and intelligence community, sought to plant and spread the bogus narrative about Trump colluding with Russia even before the FBI operations officially began. Hacked emails and foreign intelligence corroborated this extraordinary collusion between campaign operatives, federal law enforcement, and the media — a clear case of government being weaponized for partisan ends. Leaders at the FBI — Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok — and at the CIA, and their superiors in the Obama White House, knew precisely what was unfolding. They were using the intelligence community's credibility to spread what they knew to be their own fiction as if it were truth. Yet, they pressed ahead anyway, smearing Trump and creating excuses to spy on his campaign. Their collusion made a mockery of the rule of law, resulting in illegal warrants, fabricated evidence, and years of phony investigations. Recent Judicial Watch lawsuits have further exposed how shamelessly courts and legal systems were deceived, with virtually no oversight or meaningful hearings. For all it revealed, the Durham investigation resulted in one modest plea deal and few and failed prosecutions. If no one is held to account, Americans' confidence in government will be shaken by the toxic message that in Washington, the bigger the crime, the less likely it is to be punished. The FBI and Justice Department, and their enablers in the Obama White House, engineered the most egregious abuse of power and corruption in modern American history. The public deserves justice — not just in the form of reports and hearings, but through criminal prosecution of the officials who orchestrated and covered up this conspiracy. Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and every enabler involved must be brought before a court of law. No spin can excuse years of perjury, abuse, and violations of civil liberties. It is not enough to claim that 'mistakes were made' or offer platitudes about trust. Laws were broken. Rights were trampled. Our democracy was threatened. News of criminal referrals for perjury by some of the players is a good start, but only that. Nor will prosecution alone suffice. The FBI and CIA need fundamental reform. Trump's recent executive orders aimed at ending the 'weaponization of government' are steps in the right direction. These agencies have proven incapable of policing themselves. From rubber-stamp FISA courts to politicized counterintelligence and persecution of whistleblowers, these agencies are built on unaccountable power. Significantly cutting back the Justice Department and dismantling the FBI should be on the table. America is a republic, not a banana republic. It's time for accountability, reform and a sharp reminder to the deep state: in America, the people are sovereign, not unelected bureaucrats.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Spain's Sanchez Calls for National Climate Pact as Fires Rage
Spain's Pedro Sanchez called for a nationwide pact uniting all levels of government to combat what he called an accelerating climate emergency as wildfires raged in several regions of the country. 'The climate emergency that's ravishing the world is increasingly more accelerated, more severe and more frequent, especially in places like the Iberian Peninsula,' the prime minister said on Sunday in Orense, in the northwestern region of Galicia, one of the most devastated by blazes. 'We are going to propose a big nationwide pact for the mitigation and adaptation to the climate emergency.'
