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Democratic senators introduced a bill on Tuesday to ban immigration officers from concealing their identities while engaged in immigration enforcement activities.
The “visible act”, introduced by senators Alex Padilla of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, comes in the wake of scenes of masked immigration agents in unmarked vehicles snatching people off the street without meaningfully identifying their agency or presenting a warrant, prompting observers to liken Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests to kidnappings.
The bill requires officers from Ice, the Department of Homeland Security, or other state and federal agencies detailed for immigration enforcement to clearly display their agency name or acronym and either their name or badge number without tactical gear or clothing covering it up. It would prohibit non-medical face coverings such as masks or balaclavas that obscure an officer’s identity.
“Members of the public often have no way to confirm whether they are interacting with legitimate government officials,” Padilla said in a statement published with the proposed law. “This lack of transparency endangers public safety by causing confusion, fear and mistrust, especially in communities already subjected to heightened immigration scrutiny. It also increases risks for law enforcement personnel by creating uncertainty in high-stress situations, particularly when individuals cannot distinguish real officers from impersonators.”
The bill provides for exceptions for officer safety, such as the use of a gas mask if police are using gas to disperse a crowd, and does not apply to covert or non-public operations.
At a press conference in June, Todd Lyons, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), defended agents concealing their identities.
“We ran an operation where Ice officers were doxed,” Lyons said. “People are out there taking photos of the names and their faces and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves, so 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.”
Ice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill.
California has become a flash point for conflicts between the public and Ice, one that became personal for Padilla after federal agents pushed him out of a news conference on 12 June and handcuffed him after he tried to ask a question of the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.
In a letter sent on Monday to Lyons, Padilla and 13 other Democratic senators posed questions about Ice’s policies and practices of concealing officers’ identities.
“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,” the letter states. “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.”
