On Tuesday, Democratic Senators Alex Padilla and Corey Booker proposed the VISIBLE Act, which would require that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents wear IDs with an agency association and limit the use of face masks.
Fourteen Senate Democrats also sent a letter to ICE Director Todd Lyons writing, “Storming courthouses, grabbing students off the street, raiding places of work, and sweeping through restaurants at prime dining hours are in and of themselves tactics clearly designed to engender fear and sow chaos in the population. Doing so in plainclothes, with no identification of their name or agency, while wearing a mask designed to obscure the agent’s face, represents a clear attempt to compound that fear and chaos – and to avoid accountability for agents’ actions.”
Late last month, in Downtown Los Angeles, Andrea Velez, a US citizen, was arrested by masked ICE agents wearing plain clothes and tactical vests. In Portland, Oregon, a Colombian immigrant was arrested by a group of agents who were dressed entirely like civilians off the street – no badges, no tactical vests, no patches, only masks.
These are only a couple of examples of the peculiar situation that many people have found themselves in across the country. Unmarked cars, masked men without IDs or badges, and guns suddenly swarming you as you try to go about your day.
To make matters worse, there are imposters out there pretending to be immigration enforcement agents and kidnapping people – in one instance, a man in Raleigh, North Carolina broke into a woman’s motel room and raped her by threatening to deport her if she didn’t have sex with him.
Many of the interactions that people have with ICE appear to be prompted by nothing more than the fact that the person looks Hispanic. Latinos who are also US citizens are reporting in greater numbers being detained or arrested by ICE.
Given that I am a US citizen and that my face is such that anyone who looked at me would reasonably assume that I’m Latino, it’s easy to wonder how I would react if I was suddenly approached by gun-wielding, unidentified men in masks.
They won’t have probable cause to detain or arrest me because again, I’m a US citizen and I don’t typically go around shouting that I’m an illegal. I also don’t break the law apart from all of the blood poisoning I do to the country. Therefore, unless their justification for questioning me is simply that I look like a Latino, there is absolutely no reason for legitimate law or immigration enforcement to approach me, touch me, or question me at all.
If I’m a reasonable person, and I look at what the law says and believe that the Constitution protects me from unreasonable searches and seizures, I would have to assume that the people who are bothering me are either imposters or rogue, law-breaking agents.
Either way, my initial instinct is to resist, as I’m sure it is for many others out there whose blood boils at the thought of law enforcement having the audacity to touch them, question them, or treat them like criminals without a shred of justification.
Is it reasonable to resist? Well, some of them are wearing sweatpants, none have shown me any badge or ID, I’ve done nothing wrong, and there are dorks out there pretending to be ICE agents.
That’s the position that the Trump administration and ICE are putting people in by choosing to conduct their operations while wearing masks and refusing to display identifying information. They’re asking people to accept circumstances where they have to pray that the individuals who are violating their rights are actual federal agents.
It would result in an even worse outcome for me because I would not be able to use the “I feared for my life” defense for resisting arrest. My father – a real man – taught me that “real men” never admit their fears. That means that in court, I would be forced to state on the record that I never feared for my life – no citizen should ever have to choose between justice and machismo.
Most police departments require their officers to have their faces uncovered, wear identifying information, and provide it to those they make contact with. While instances of law enforcement agents being doxxed are limited, it is a risk that they have to take in order to preserve transparency and accountability – distinguishing features of non-secret police forces. If that’s too high of a risk for some immigration agents, we kindly ask them to find something else to do.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.