Unmasking ICE — or Throwing Agents to the Wolves?
A personal perspective from a pundit who’s been there
By Andrew R. Arthur on July 11, 2025
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.”
https://cis.org/Arthur/Unmasking-ICE-or-Throwing-Agents-Wolves
