ICE’s excuse for wearing masks has never actually manifested
From the earliest months of Donald Trump’s second term in office, federal immigration officers have conducted their raids and arrests while concealing their identities, a notable deviation from the way in which law enforcement has long been conducted in the United States. The public grants police and other law enforcement the right to carry weapons and detain suspects; in return, they are expected to be accountable to the public that employs them.
What the Department of Homeland Security has long argued is that this is dangerous for the officers. Assaults against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents surged in 2025, we have been told. Agents must protect their identities in order to keep themselves safe from this uptick in hostility and violence.
A review of DHS and ICE press releases since January 2025, though, indicates that this theoretical scenario has never actually occurred. At no point in time has an officer been seen conducting his work, identified and subsequently attacked. While there have been threats issued against agents and incidents of off-duty harassment, there are no known incidents in which an officer was assaulted while off-duty because he was identified as a federal agent.
There appears to have been only one incident in which an officer was attacked while off-duty. That occurred in July, when an officer was shot during a robbery attempt in New York City. One of the attackers was an immigrant living in the country despite a deportation order.
In September, a sniper fired on an ICE facility in Texas, killing two detainees and injuring another. No officers were struck. A clip found at scene had “ANTI-ICE” written on it; the alleged shooter appears to have had mental health issues.
That this attack occurred at an ICE facility is important. The other assaults documented in DHS and ICE press releases all occurred when agents were either working at an ICE facility or attempting to execute an operation. In other words, they occurred at times when they were obviously identifiable as ICE agents. There was no tracking them down to ID them; the incidents occurred while they were at work. Many of the documented assaults involved immigrants who were hoping to evade detention. Had the agents not been wearing masks, these situations would almost certainly have been no different.
There have been general threats made against federal agents, according to DHS. The agency claims to have uncovered bounties issued by Mexican cartels and others against officers. There have been bomb threats made against facilities in Texas and New York. There have been generalized online threats, too. When I wrote about the documented assaults for The Washington Post last year, a DHS official pointed to the arrest of Ray King, who’d made threats against ICE agents on social media … in part because he was angry that agents were obscuring their identities.
DHS posted a snippet of a voicemail apparently left for the agency, which it described as “DISGUSTING,” including “vile rhetoric” that was part of “violence and dehumanization” their agents faced.
The content of the snippet? The caller suggests that masked agents are “bad guys” and calls for them to be identified and subject to “public shaming.” You may be the judge of the extent to which this constitutes violence.
There have been threats made against and harassment of specific officers. The spouse of an officer in Texas allegedly received a voicemail suggesting that her husband’s fate would mirror that of the Nazis. On Jan. 24, the day Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents, a caller allegedly suggested that an officer should kill himself because “all of your friends are fucking murderers.”
An attorney working for ICE had her personal information posted online. Agents in Portland were identified in flyers posted around the community. A similar incident in California led to a massive raid on a home, footage of which aired on Fox News. An ICE official had a small amount of garbage dumped on their lawn, with a sign reading “ICE IS TRASH.”
Three women were indicted in September for livestreaming while following an agent home and revealing his address. They shouted to neighbors that “ICE lives on your street and you should know” and encouraged anyone watching to “come on down.” Again, though, this was apparently a case in which the agent’s identity was determined because he had been at work when the women started following him.
These are isolated incidents, none of which resulted in violence. Again, most of the assaults against ICE agents have occurred while agents were conducting their duties, including when engaging with protesters. A central reason that assaults against ICE officers have spiked since Trump took office is that there are more officers engaged in more actions and conducting more arrests.
It is fair to note that ICE’s policy of allowing agents to shield their identities might have done exactly what they claim: protected them from off-duty retribution. But it is also fair to note that, even when agents have been identified outside of work, they have not been targeted with violence.
It is also fair to note that ICE has at times conflated “identification,” “harassment” and “violence” to suggest that even criticism and calls for accountability are unacceptable attacks on their employees.
If protection isn’t the reason for masking, you might ask, then what is? Well, perhaps what I theorized back in May (and at the beginning of this article): that masking allows ICE agents to avoid accountability for their actions. We’ve seen far more videos of ICE and Border Patrol agents manhandling protesters and immigrants than we’ve seen the reverse; we’ve seen incidents in which unidentified agents clearly engaged in unacceptable violence against protesters (drive-by pepper spraying, firing non-lethal munitions at peoples’ heads). Who, for example, killed Alex Pretti? We don’t know.
A judge in Minnesota suggested that ICE’s indifference to the law likely has meant that it “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” If ICE views itself as above the law, which seems more likely: that its agents wear masks so that they are protected against the public — or so that they are protected against legal accountability?
Photo: Federal agents in Minnesota. (Chad Davis/Flickr)