Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wear masks, President Donald Trump and his supporters have insisted, because if they have to show their faces, then they will be doxxed. More specifically, Republicans have argued, bystanders could take photos of agents’ faces, identify them and use that information to harm them.
An untold number of law enforcement officers in the U.S. go to work every day not only with their faces visible but also with their names on their chests. To argue that ICE agents are vulnerable to doxxing by showing their faces is to argue that all law enforcement officers who show their faces are. But other law enforcement officers work with their faces visible, which was an indication, long ago, that ICE officers could ditch the masks, too.
But after
dispatching ICE to 14 major U.S. airports where
unpaid Transportation Security Administration workers are quitting or calling out sick, Trump said Monday on social media that
“I would greatly appreciate…NO MASKS” at the airports.
They did so at airports on Monday; their faces were clearly visible. Less clear was what the agents were doing at the airports. Photos and videos from some airports showed ICE officers walking or standing around, doing little — if anything — to relieve TSA agents.
The apparent inability of ICE agents to do anything to speed up the
long security lines at airports isn’t the only thing we’ve learned about the agency in recent days. “Trump realized ICE agents don’t need masks in airports,” Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on “The Last Word” on Monday night.
“If they don’t need masks in airports, then I don’t understand why they need masks when they’re wandering around communities across the country. We now know they don’t need the masks. That’s good news.”
If there were a legitimate threat to ICE agents who show their faces outside airports, then that threat would also exist inside airports.
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