The sight of masked federal agents exiting unmarked vehicles to carry out immigration arrests has become, for some, a disturbing norm across the country — including in New York.
Those arrests have been increasing as part of President Donald Trump’s vow to carry out the “largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.”
New York state Democratic leaders have criticized the crackdown, but have little authority to stop the arrests. They say they do have the power, however, to ban all levels of law enforcement from wearing face masks and coverings, which they say further creates a culture of fear and intimidation.
“It’s shocked my conscience. I think it should shock everybody,” state Sen. Pat Fahy, D-Albany, said of federal agents wearing masks.
“The idea that somebody can pull up, jump out of an unmarked vehicle in all-black gear with a hidden face that only shows your eyes — I'm sorry, it’s right out of the Banana Republic-type era.”
She and Assemblymember Tony Simone, D-Manhattan, are proposing a bill that would prohibit federal, state and local law enforcement from wearing masks or face coverings while interacting with the public.
The bill, known as the Mandating End of Lawless Tactics Act, also would require law enforcement to wear name badges or badge numbers, and clothing that identifies what agency they are with. There would be exceptions for certain cases, including if it's medically required or for a tactical purpose.
“When police wear masks," Simone said, “democracy loses its face.”
The push to ban face coverings has set off a debate about transparency, accountability, and public as well as officer safety.
‘Transparency and accountability’
In New York, Trump’s deportation directive has translated to a more than 40% year-over-year increase in ICE arrests through late June, according to the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers that collects immigration data. Trump officials are said to have a quota of arresting, at “minimum,” 3,000 people each day.
Democrats in Congress have called for a federal ban, which New York Attorney General Letitia James and about 20 other state attorneys general supported. But no action is expected with Republicans in the majority of both chambers. New York lawmakers say it’s now up to states to, in their words, protect residents while promoting transparency from law enforcement officials.
California was the first state to consider banning face coverings and requiring more identification from law enforcement at all levels. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Massachusetts have since proposed similar legislation.
“Prior to this complete disruption,” Fahy said, “and upending of anything we’ve ever known for decades, if not a couple hundred years, law enforcement generally embraced transparency and accountability.”
Federal agents wearing masks, Fahy said, “runs completely counter (to that).”
There have been times when local law enforcement, too, has sought to conceal officers’ identities.
In Buffalo, the city’s Police Department decided in 2020 to not require officers to display their name tags due to doxxing – or publicly sharing personal information about an individual – that coincided with Black Lives Matter demonstrations and separate incidents that the Department described as riots. After civil rights advocates criticized the policy for not being transparent, the Police Department reversed that position in 2021.
Rochester’s Police Department implemented a policy during that same time that allows uniformed police officers to not show their name tags while handling protests. If approved by the police chief, they are instead given a number that they display during protests as an accountability measure.
But uniformed officers in Rochester are not allowed to wear face masks, unless it is for a medical or tactical reason.
‘Misplaced priorities’
Some state Republicans say a mask ban would leave federal agents and their families vulnerable to doxxing, and could hinder officers in doing their jobs as effectively.
“I don't really understand what the sponsors are getting at. Do they not think that ICE agents ought to use the tools to keep them safe?” said Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay, R-Oswego.
The Trump administration also has defended the use of masks. Todd Lyons, who heads U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, said that while he is “not a proponent of the masks,” he will still allow it to protect agents. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said assaults against ICE officers have increased significantly.
“It’s shameful that Democrats would attempt to undermine law enforcement officers by attacking them with absolutely no basis or knowledge of their character instead of calling on their supporters to stop assaulting law enforcement agents,” Jackson wrote in a statement.
Barclay said he’d be “open if there’s other ways to protect these officers.”
"I think ideally to have everybody, would be unmasked and safe, and would be able to do their jobs without consequences of doing their jobs."
But he described state Democrats as having “misplaced priorities” by proposing a mask ban for law enforcement while many of them criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul for enhancing penalties for people who commit crimes while wearing masks earlier this year.
The bill, Barclay said, "seems like this is sort of a reaction to something that hasn't really been an issue, other than (Democrats) don't generally like ICE agents and they don't like people getting deported," Barclay said.
He also maintained that agents wearing masks doesn’t necessarily reflect how they think about the work that they are conducting.
Can New York ban masks for officers?
When asked about the MELT Act, Hochul said she finds it “abhorrent” that federal agents have been wearing masks while conducting immigration arrests.
“I resent ICE intruding in our communities,” Hochul said in a separate news conference. “They’ve been overly aggressive. They're hurting our businesses and our families and people who’ve been hardworking members of our society, some for decades.”
Ella Weber has been a volunteer court watcher in New York City immigration courts since May, when she says the arrests began occurring more frequently. “Some days, you see a dozen (arrests),” Weber said. “Some days, it’s one or two. It very much depends.”
Her job is to inform immigrants of their rights, pass along information as needed and provide any other help as needed to immigrants as they are arrested. Initially, she said, agents didn’t conceal their faces. But that changed within days, she said, as onlookers started filming the arrests.
Jessica Bulman-Pozen, who is the co-director of the Center for Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School, said the mask bill presents a fundamental question about what it means if federal agents feel compelled or are told to conceal their identities while doing their work.
Contrary to Barclay’s argument about officer safety, she said the bill “is responding to the fact that in a free nation, rather than a totalitarian regime, the people who are doing the work of the government shouldn’t have to conceal their identities.”
“There should be transparency about who government is and the work it is doing,” Bulman-Pozen added.
Bulman-Pozen said states that have proposed legislation banning face masks for law enforcement – with health-related and exceptions – have a sound legal argument for doing so. She said the bills cover all levels of law enforcement in a way that doesn’t discriminate against federal agents, in particular.
If it did, Bulman-Pozen argued, that would be in violation of a legal tradition rooted in the Constitution called intergovernmental immunity, which protects the federal government from interference from state laws.
“The fact that the state is trying to regulate – even-handedly – the state, local and federal to protect its residents, and not stopping the federal government from carrying out its responsibilities,” Bulman-Pozen said, “gives it very strong arguments.”
One concern, Bulman-Pozen and Fahy said, is that if law enforcement aren’t required to show their faces or wear badges, individuals can more easily impersonate law enforcement by similarly wearing plain clothing and face masks, and then later commit crimes.
“I think the strongest case for the law is that the states have both the constitutional power, and you could say even a constitutional obligation, to try to protect their residents,” she said.
If passed, a mask ban won’t necessarily stop ICE from continuing to carry out arrests, Fahy said. New funding allocated to ICE under Trump’s self-described “One Big Beautiful Bill” makes it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government – a move that federal officials say will help agents carry out more deportations.
But Fahy argued that a mask ban would speak to those concerned over the tactics federal agents are using during immigration arrests, and the arrests themselves.
“We think that some of this is also going to continue to play out in the court of public opinion,” she said.
