ICE Boss Thinks Journalists Shouldn’t Be Asking About Masked Officers Disappearing People
from the why-is-this-pen-so-mighty dept
So powerful. And yet, sooooo sensitive. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump asked a simple question: why are so many ICE agents covering their faces when disappearing people from US city streets? Pointing to the extremely disturbing arrest of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk over her criticism of her university for its Israel-Palestine conflict stance, Bump went on to ask experts in the law enforcement field why federal officers had decided it was ok to carry out enforcement actions in plainclothes and masks.
Ozturk was arrested in Somerville, Massachusetts, after walking down a public street into a web of waiting plainclothes federal agents. At least one agent produced a badge only once she was detained; several were shown on video wearing or pulling up face coverings with the effect of concealing their identities.
In the weeks since her arrest, similar scenes have become commonplace. Reports and social media posts from across the country document federal agents seizing targeted individuals (and likely some number of non-targeted ones) while wearing plainclothes and face coverings.
The conclusion was obvious: this isn’t about officer safety. This is about shielding themselves from accountability.
Why would federal law enforcement need to take steps to muddy accountability or mask their identities?
As in the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, the answer is obvious: if there is reason their actions would need to be held to account.
That assertion was apparently so unacceptable that acting ICE head Todd Lyons asked for (and received) op-ed space in the same paper that employs Bump. His response is as idiotic as it is useless.
It’s unfortunate that Post columnist Philip Bump published his online op-ed “Is that guy with a gun an ICE officer — or just a guy with a gun?” during National Police Week, which honors the heroes who keep America safe in our communities and homes.
The use of plainclothes officers is a long-standing law enforcement practice. And while one of Bump’s sources acknowledges in passing that “officers are worried about being targeted,” Bump himself moved quickly past this concern to assert that police officers wearing face coverings choose to do so only to avoid accountability.
First, the fact that it was National Police Week probably went unnoticed by Bump just as surely as it went unnoticed by 95% of Americans. I’m sure Lyons would have felt just as compelled to complain if this had been published during Black History Month. Or on the Cinco de Mayo.
Second, the use of plainclothes officers is a thing. We get that. What we’re having trouble comprehending is why ICE and co-opted forces feel compelled to completely hide their identities, along with the identity of the agency they work for. This isn’t about officer safety. It’s about shielding officers from the consequences of their own actions — actions, it must be pointed out, that look an awful lot like regular-ass unlawful kidnappings performed by armed men driving similarly unmarked vehicles.
Avoiding accountability may not be the only reason these officers are doing these things dressed this way. But it’s incredibly asinine to pretend that it’s not an important part of the equation.
Lyons tries to buttress his laughable claims with this supposedly horrifying statistic:
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.
Wow. That’s a lot. I mean… it’s a lot of percents. There’s no denying that. The link provided by Lyons directs readers wondering about this stat to… a social media post by the DHS similarly decrying criticism of ICE and its tactics.
Searching the internet for the source of this stat keeps leading back to the same place: the DHS and its press office. Here it is again, dropped into a long post… complaining about criticism from political leaders, journalists, and rights advocates. Bonus: this post also thinks it’s wrong to complain about law enforcement during Cop Week.
“Even during National Police Week, the media, members of Congress, and sanctuary politicians have demonized ICE and CBP officers who bravely serve their country,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Attacks and smears against ICE have resulted in officers facing a 413% increase in assaults. We are setting the facts straight and reassuring America that President Trump and Secretary Noem will continue to support ICE and CBP in their efforts to make America safe again.
The number is meaningless. There’s no link to any supporting study or stat or oversight report or anything. It’s just a number that sounds big but doesn’t have any relation to anything. 413% since when? Last week? Last month? The past decade? Since the formation of the agency?
Who knows? Definitely not ICE and its PR front-runners. No one has any context to add, presumably because doing so would either show the number is just made up or that any increase in assaults isn’t linked to recent criticism of the agency. It’s just noise — the sort of thing that rouses the rabble but fails to impress anyone but those already inclined to be impressed.
To sum up: fuck ICE and Todd Lyons. Do your job honestly or get whatever’s coming to you. If you’re seeing an increase in assaults, it’s probably because people are fighting back against masked assailants who are attempting to kidnap them. And they’re not wrong to believe it. Just because you’ve got a badge in the drawer back at the office doesn’t mean you should be given a free pass for engaging in acts that look unlawful to everyone but the people perpetrating them.
Filed Under: dhs, ice, immigration, kidnapping, kristi noem, philip bump, todd lyons
Companies: washington post
Comments on “ICE Boss Thinks Journalists Shouldn’t Be Asking About Masked Officers Disappearing People”
The Increase in assaults
On people who acost people on the street masked and refusing to say who the are? Cry me a river, they’re making their own problem.
Re:
If this country were more decent, that rate of assaults on ICEy pigs would be a lot higher.
Write your state government and demand laws prohibiting masked law enforcement. Accountability is paramount.
This is not legitimate governance.
And let’s face it; it’s pretty clear that these actions don’t just look unlawful; they very much are unlawful. But pigs don’t like to follow the law.
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Actually, pigs are very intelligent and would willingly follow laws that apply to them if they knew about them. The thugs that (should) wear uniforms, on the other hand…
It's The KKK model of accountability
Wear the mask, violate people’s rights, roughh them up, then go back to being a good neighbor, grilling chicken at the local park, the next day.
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Those would delight in anonymous cruelty always wear two masks: one for enacting it and one for distancing themselves from it.
Lyons’s “ICE agents are not Nazis” shirt is getting a lot of questions that are already answered by his shirt.
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He’s right. The Nazis wore uniforms. ICE are more like the Stasi.
Re: "ICE agents are not Nazis"
In fact ICE compares neatly to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the secret intelligence service tasked with rounding up undesirables and putting them in concentration camps (originally, just warehouses) and directing them towards forced labor.
It was run by Reinhard Heydrich, the Naziest nazi to ever nazi.
Eventually Heydrich would decide that it’s just too expensive to keep all the untermenschen in facilities and they should be processed away using the same disposal machine they used for disabled folk.
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“They’re just following orders”
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It should, since it’s arguably a false statement. There have been at least two documented (neo)Nazis exposed in ICE ranks recently.
I read that mean “We’re getting verbally smeared 4 times harder than we were previously”.
That interpretation is a little lose on the correct English formulation of things, but I doubt the speaker was big on those things anyhow.
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So they went from two assaults to 10.
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ICE is getting smeared just like sewers contain no shit.
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Choosing Sides
The gang bangers from South America have a violent history of enacting revenge on law enforcement. The illegals don’t have a legal leg to stand on when it comes to “accountability”. They’re hoping to make it personal, and commit violence against the agents and their families.
The American people are on the side of ICE enforcement. The alleged journalists are on the side of the narco cartels.
Re:
Rumeysa Ozturk is a PhD student at Tufts University whose only “crime” was writing an op-ed criticizing the slaughter of Gazan Palestinians by the Israeli military. No evidence suggests she was a “gangbanger”, a terrorist, or any other kind of immediate threat to the people of the United States.
She was still blackbagged off the street by masked ICE agents.
ICE agents who wear masks are no better than Klansmen or Nazis: They want to hide who they are so they don’t have to be held accountable by society for what they’ve done when they take off the uniform. They don’t have to think about the awful shit they’ve done if they can distance themselves from it by attributing their actions to the uniform, to their superiors, to the “orders” they were “just following”.
The Nazis who went on trial at Nuremburg thought they could get away with their actions by raising that defense. Seems like everyone but you knows how well that cunning plan worked.
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In that case, please let us know any specific examples of said ‘plainclothes ICE agents’ arresting these so-called gang-bangers, since everything reported so far has been completely innocent citizens, like Rumeysa Ozturk.
Or, maybe, you can shut your Nazi-dick-sucking mouth.
Re: Re:
Well, you know… ICE has been sweeping up so many “illegals” and “well, we’ll pretend that they’re illegals”, that there’s bound to be a handful of dubious characters in the bunch.
Not many though; the actual criminals are relatively unlikely to be working in sweatshops, registered with various agencies, or attending appointments with government officials overseeing their green card application.
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Or attending universities and writing thesis papers for a PhD.
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Or showing up at the government office for the final ceremony to officially confirm the granting of their American citizenship .
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Didn’t anyone ever teach you the First Rule of Holes, Koby? When you’re in one, stop digging.
Re: The American people would mind if you fell off a cliff
Hey hun. Remember way back in the distant past of last month where you thought there were ne legit medical uses for fentanyl and gangs paid taxes on illegal shipments of it?
No of course not you have the memory of a goldfish with CTE
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My god you are a fucking idiot.
You are the type of person who probably things it would be fine to torture and kill a criminal.
It’s about the American officers following the law and the constitution you dumb fuck
Re: Re:
Koby’s the kind of guy who thinks the comfort class (and White folks) deserve preferential treatment, such as “innocent until proven guilty” and “it’s not a crime when they do it”.
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So. What are you going to do at night if 5 people show up armed with masks, no identification, no warrant and want to enter your house?
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“Come on in, guys, we’re already planning the next cross-burning!” — Koby, probably
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No, he is busy with coming up with some inexcusable excuse for the leaked e-mails from Tulsi Gabbard’s chief-of-staff Joe Kent that shows they re-wrote the intel reports about Venezuela and the Tren de Aragua gang to fit their preferred narrative.
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He would drop to his knees and start sucking like all his Christmases had come at once.
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Hey Kristi aren’t you supposed to be running DHS?
Not embarrassing yourself on a blog.
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That would be a more impressive comment if there was any evidence that ICE is arresting actual “gang bangers” rather than peaceful, productive, law-abiding family members — who not incidentally are frequently in the middle of the legal processes required to recognize and/or confirm them as legitimate residents of the country. Worse, we’re seeing them get “poached” by ICE “agents when attending official meetings with government officials as part of the formal legal process of becoming legally recognized residents. There are documented cases of applicants that have already been cleared as non-criminal applicants and have received or presented whatever formal documents they need as legal residents of the USA, only to have those documents arbitrarily “invalidated” without any pretense of due process or arbitrarily deemed “fake” without the slightest attempt to actually check their validity.
And to your other claim: oddly enough, we’re seeing stories that American citizens (who according to you are “on the side of ICE enforcement”) are somehow getting arrested for interfering with ICE “officers” attempts to arrest their neighbors without showing ID or a legitimate judicial warrant (or even a non-judicial “administrative” warrant).
That’s right; American citizens are so “on the side of ICE” that ICE squads have had to call local police forces to “protect” them from the surrounding neighborhood moms and teenage girls (some literally with infants in arms) and arrest them for interfering (by standing between and asking simple questions like “Do you have a warrant? Where’s your warrant?)
If we’re hearing about this even in Canada and the UK, and even non-English speaking countries, what’s your excuse for such rank ignorance? (NB. Relying on Fox “News” is not a credible excuse.)
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Must be so easy going through life without a single original thought, merely parroting lies and shit you heard on Fox.
A simple application of critical thinking and logic would be too much, so simpleton you remain.
Re: The leopards wil come for you too bro
For fucks sake you whimpering cunt. At least Tokyo Rose sounded at least remotely plausible.
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Fuck, even Lord Haw-Haw sounded more plausible than Koby, and he was an Irishman faking an RP accent.
“And while one of Bump’s sources acknowledges in passing that “officers are worried about being targeted,””
That’s especially wild when held up next to the very common justification for our loose gun laws: “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun”.
A masked, plain-clothed, un-badged person with a gun that is detaining unarmed people for unspecified reasons is a “bad guy with a gun”, and should be getting “targeted” by all these proverbial “good guys with guns”.
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Being America, sooner or later a armed ice agent in plain cloths is going to run into a good guy with a gun or a cop and someone will die.
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Unfortunately, that’s likely to be the “illegal immigrant” if the person accosting the ICE dick is a cop. They’re not known for their love of brown people.
Highly dangerous for everyone involved
When you are approached on the street by masked individuals ordering you to do something, how do you know if they’re police or random thugs?
Even a random thug can yell “Police!” or hold up a shiny object resembling a badge. If they’re out of uniform and have their identities concealed, they’re gangsters.
There was a case last year where a man ran over an undercover police officer when he was attempting to escape what he genuinely believed was a kidnapping attempt.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/umar-zameer-verdict-1.7180011
Police should always be fully uniformed and readily identifiable. Any “undercover” operation should be short-term with damn good reasons behind it, but arrests should always be made by uniformed officers. No exceptions.
Re: Undercover officers
Undercover officers are essentially spies or moles in organized crime to gain intel (and evidence) on the structure of the organization.
If it turns into an arrest, the undercover’s job is to get out of the way of the armored / uniformed police making the raid / bust (who should know who the UO is).
I suppose detectives and inspectors (who are plain-clothes) could make arrests, but they also should have access to enough support to be redundant.
While I don’t want anyone to get hurt or killed, it will be very interesting what the courts have to say if one of these mystery officers kills someone, or gets killed by someone defending themselves. Does qualified immunity apply to an undeclared officer? Does “stand your ground” apply against an undeclared officer?
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I recall a case in a mixwestern state when the police screwed up a no-knock raid badly enough by not identifying themselves at all that they couldn’t even charge the inhabitants for shooting them successfully.
Such extreme levels of sloppiness and getting caught in it are rare but sadly the real rarity is in judges willing to hold the police accountable.
Oh, those pesky masks...
If the 413% increase in assaults is valid, then it would appear that officers covering their faces isn’t an effective deterrent to preventing assaults.
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The “assaults” are bystanders demanding “where’s your warrant?” and pointing deadly cellphones cameras at them while they’re kidnapping grad students or moms shopping with their children.
The obvious way to read the claim is that ICE has been making so many more abusive arrests that the rate at which they assault people that they are detaining and then claim to be assaulted by those victims has increased.
“We’re violating so many rights that we have to make up even more fictions in order to defend our fascistic tactics!”
Hisory repeating itself
I seem to recall another group of individuals who felt it was appropriate to wear masks when harassing and terrorizing individuals.
The fact that now it’s balaclavas rather than white hoods doesn’t make it any better than it was back then.
Our children’s children will look back at history (if the republicans don’t ban and burn all history books) and wonder WTF??
Seems to be anyone near would be well without shooting in self defense.
You do not get the benefit of treatment as a law enforcement officer if you hide your identity.
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I mean, the alternative is getting black-bagged to an El Salvador torture hole.
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Yup. The regime might be fine black-bagging people to traffick them to a foreign country and claim that the masks and lack of identification is to protect the ICE agents but they’ve done more to put those same agents at risk of violence than anyone, as they’ve made clear that ‘just comply and let the courts handle any mistakes’ isn’t a viable option and done so in a manner that people have no way of distinguishing an ICE kidnapper from a non-governmental one.
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And there have already been incidents of people impersonating ICE “officers — there have already been people arrested and charged with impersonating ICE officers.
The masking and informal attire serve two distinct purposes.
Yes, anonymity protects law enforcement from doxxing and retaliation. But it also is setting up a scenario that invites victims and bystanders to fight back, which the administration will, at some point, use as justification for invoking the Insurrection Act.
If I witnessed a group of masked men bundling someone into an unmarked vehicle, my first thought would be to call 911 to report an apparent kidnapping.
A 413%increase in assaults against ICE agents seems to be indicative of two things either alone or in combination.
As long as we're making up statistics...
Since his appointment as acting head of ICE, the number of ICE officers found guilty of blatant Constitutional violations has skyrocketed by 827%.
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That statistic is so ludicrously low, you should be embarrassed. I would be amazed and astounded if the percentage of legitimate ICE arrests since January exceeds the low single digits. (In fact, I’d bet that the significant digits are entirely below the decimal point.)
'Defending yourself from being trafficked is assault!'
Even taking the 413% at face value(I don’t) how many of those ‘assaults’ are people defending themselves from being kidnapped off the street by people in masks and plain clothes with no badges, as opposed to people pissed off in general that ICE agents are doing that?
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Is this simply a predictable result of ICE deciding to interact with the public 413% more frequently, or actually just a 413% increase in the number of encounters they’ve decided to describe as assault? Probably a mix of both.
Correction
FTFY
“Don’t ask about them, they have masks on, you can’t see them, move along”
Four truths about cops
Violence is oxygen.
Lying is water.
Accountability is Kryptonite.
The “good” cops won’t do anything about the bad ones.
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To reform a corrupt system, we must first destroy it.
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A good cop who covers for a bad cop, whether through action or inaction, is not a good cop.
Sovereign citizens, assemble!
I wonder where that lot are hiding, now they actually have legitimate uses for the guns they’ve supposedly been ready to use to defend “freedom” since time immemorial.
For all the incoherent, frothing-at-the-mouth yapping they’ve been doing over the years, it only took the barest whiff of reality for the cowards to go to ground while the USA dies by thousands of little cuts. Shocker.
Re: 'We must protect ourselves from tyrants! No not THOSE ones, the ones I don't like!'
Oh they’re not hiding they’re cheering, because it turns out that this was what they wanted all along and the ‘immanent government tyranny’ that they used to justify stocking up on an entire armory’s worth of guns was just code for ‘a government I don’t like(read: non-republican) having power’.
Re: Re: When the face-eating leopards are still hungry
Sadly some of us may not be around to enjoy the shocked-Pikachu faces as the worker-class MAGAs get added to the acceptable targets list, one demographic at a time, with the remainder cheering on the new purges as fervently as the last.
The face-eating leopards don’t ever really stop eating even as the Allies are bombing industrial farms and moving into native territory.
being patient and waiting for them to get here
There are agricultural endeavors whose work forces include spanish-speakers. Not sure how long it will take the ICE brownshirts to get to Florida, and how they will feel about wearing the masks and hoods in the summer heat.
Interesting side note: Last year the legislature enacted Ch. 2024-80, L.F., creating F.S. 448.106. The statute bars any law requiring shade or water breaks for people toiling in the sun.