Unmasking ICE — or Throwing Agents to the Wolves?

The Washington Post ran an opinion piece this week captioned “The obvious peril of federal agents in masks”. The gist of the article, however, can be found in the subheader: “They demand the right to be anonymous, and blur the line between law enforcement and lawlessness.” Curiously absent from that analysis is any explanation of why immigration officers are concealing their identities when carrying out their duties. The risks they face are real — take it from a pundit who has experienced them personally.

“An Escape Route from Identification and Responsibility”

That op-ed begins, somewhat awkwardly: “The paradox of masks — now being deployed by federal agents in pursuit of undocumented immigrants — is how they reveal as much as they hide. Today, they are acting as both weapon and shield.”

Respectfully, a mask can only be a weapon if you douse it with chloroform first, although (if my Facebook feed is any indication) there were any number of Americans who thought masks were weaponized against them during the late Covid pandemic.

That aside, you must already accept the fundamental premise of that piece to believe immigration agents are engaged in nefarious activities to conclude the masks agents are wearing are any sort of threat — the “weapon” in question.

As I recently explained, however, there is nothing nefarious about taking removable aliens into custody and detaining them: “The law is clear that aliens without status — criminal aliens in particular — are to be removed from the United States. The ICE officers charged with enforcing that law should not risk injury or death in doing so.”

Such nuance was absent from the Post piece, and in its place were banalities like the following:

Masks have always been an escape route from identification and responsibility. Medieval executioners wore them to assert the power of the throne and protect themselves from retribution, but then they were taking someone’s life in front of a crowd.

. . .

In a nation built on accountability and transparency, America’s masqueraders have typically hidden from both. Think of bandits robbing a stagecoach, or Klansmen terrorizing entire communities, or the Anonymous hacktivist brigades in their Guy Fawkes masks protesting centralized authority. They were all dodging culpability.

ICE as a “Terrorist Force”

Get it? ICE officers are now lumped in with axe-men, highwaymen, anarchists, and America’s ur-terrorist organization, the Klan.

The fact that supposedly responsible people make such analogies — and that the “paper of record” in our nation’s capital publishes them — shows why there may be good reasons for agents to cover their faces in public.

Regrettably, the author of that piece is not some lone gadfly — her views are being echoed publicly by elected officials.

On July 2, a Democratic U.S. congresswoman from Washington state equated ICE with a “terrorist force”, prompting the agency’s acting director to respond:

An actual Antifa terrorist tried to blow up ICE’s Northwest Processing Center in Rep. Jayapal’s home state of Washington in 2019. At the time, she tried to blame the violent attack on rhetoric from the right, in defense of an actual terrorist who tried to murder detainees and employees alike!

And on June 6, as protestors were attacking officers in her city, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) issued a statement in which she asserted:

This morning, we received reports of federal immigration enforcement actions in multiple locations in Los Angeles. As Mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place. These tactics sow terror in our communities. [Emphasis added.]

Then there’s Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), who on July 8 went on CNN to claim ICE was engaged in a racially based vendetta under color of law: “They are not going after criminals. They’re going after anybody that is brown, that looks like me, that can’t pass as what they say is a typical American.”

In a July 2019 opinion piece in USA Today, an assistant professor of political science and Latino studies at the University of Notre Dame claimed that nearly a quarter of ICE agents and half of all Border Patrol agents were “Latino”—even as he was encouraging them all to quit.

In that light, Rep. Gomez might well have been alleging that cops in turn-of-the century New York City had it in for the Irish.

“FIGHT ICE TERROR WITH CLASS WAR”

Not surprisingly, amidst all this talk of racist-fueled ICE terrorism, susceptible (or gullible, or just stupid) individuals have apparently opted to take matters into their own hands.

On July 6, 27-year-old Ryan Luis Mosqueda showed up at the Border Patrol annex in McAllen Texas, and opened fire with a rifle in an incident in which one local officer was shot in the knee, and another plus a Border Patrol agent were injured (and Mosqueda was killed).

Spray painted on the assailant’s car (which held a bevy of other weapons) was a slogan apparently taken from a violent video game; his father claimed Mosqueda “had a mental deficiency”.

Given his demise, we can only speculate at the shooter’s motives, but given the location and the noxious brew of rhetoric directed at immigration enforcement, it’s not a stretch to believe the mentally infirm gamer decided to play out his online fantasies on what he saw as a deserving target.

None of the parents of the 10 suspects arrested following what has been described as a “planned ambush” on July 4 at ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility in Johnson County, Texas (during which a local officer was shot in the neck) has come forward to discuss their kids’ psychological issues.

But given that the criminal complaint in their case claims they spray painted “ICE Pig” on a vehicle in the parking lot of that facility and “F**k you pigs” on a guardhouse — and that officials found a “Resist Fascism, Fight Oligarchy” flag and a backpack with fliers that read “FIGHT ICE TERROR WITH CLASS WAR” in the area after that attack — it would appear they may have been imbibing some anti-ICE “Kool-Aid”, the only question being from what tap.

“Tonight, Your Wife Will Be Crying”

Given such attacks, one could hardly blame the agents for wanting to cover their faces in public for their protection and the protection of their families.

Which brings me to the personal.

The author of the Post opinion piece notes that: “The risk of online harassment has not led judges, journalists or elected leaders to conceal their identities despite rising threats against them.”

Actually, none of the journalists in that hoariest of journals, The Economist, publishes under his or her own name, purportedly to allow “many writers to speak with a collective voice”, but otherwise it’s true that authors, jurists, and elected leaders usually do their business in public.

So do prosecutors, and it was in that role working for the former INS that I was handling a case of a Hungarian national who had been convicted of beating a nonagenarian, herself too afraid to come to court to face her attacker again.

The alien spoke in Magyar through an interpreter, in such a convincing tone that I almost believed his claim that the incident was a simple misunderstanding in which a good Samaritan was trying to help an old lady who had tripped over a dog’s leash.

“Almost”, and at the end of the hearing, the immigration judge expressed her own doubts but relied on the records to order him deported.

After she issued her decision, the respondent asked — in English — if he could address me directly. That’s unusual, but I told the judge he could. That’s when he asked me if I was married, and when I told him I was, he said — in a measured tone: “Tonight your wife will be crying, because tonight you will be dead.”

That’s when he lunged at me, only to be tackled to the ground and hauled off by the bailiff. He never left government custody until he got to Budapest, at which point officials there were on hand to welcome him home.

Then there was the time when as a “maskless” immigration judge I handled the case of a verified member of a politically connected gang in his own country who had committed a killing in Philadelphia.

His case (ending in an order of removal) was so unmemorable I had no recollection of it when officials came to tell me that I could never go to his home country — if I did, he had vowed to either kill me or, failing that, to blow up the U.S. embassy there.

This wasn’t an idle threat. He had described my past travels in his country to his cellmate: which airport I departed from and arrived at; the dates of my visits; and where I had stayed.

Please note — these are not the only threats I received. I could be forgiven for thinking tu madre was Spanish for “your honor”, and that all those people who assured me I would “meet my maker” were attempting to reinforce my faith. My clerk was referred to as both a “fascist” and a “communist” in the same voicemail.

It would be ideal if ICE officers weren’t threatened, harassed, and attacked — and called terrorists and racists by elected officials — simply for carrying out their official duties. But they are, and until that stops, I have no problem with them wearing masks in public. Trust me — I know the threats are real.