In fight against ICE facemasks, Black Democrats point to history

The Democrats’ push to prohibit facemasks for federal immigration officers is a new fight with very old roots.

While Democrats have demanded the ban only in the wake of a pair of fatal shootings by masked agents in Minnesota just this year, many lawmakers are pointing to the country’s long history of racial violence as a factor that’s driving their campaign.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) — and particularly those of a certain generation — say they have haunting memories from a pre-Civil Rights era when a man in a mask was someone to fear. Now, as the parties are battling over new rules governing the conduct of federal immigration enforcers — a clash that’s shuttered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for more than seven weeks — the ban on masks has emerged as a key sticking point preventing a deal. 

It’s also a clear red line for Democrats demanding reforms.

“I grew up in a situation where I have seen masked people,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), 81, a former Black Caucus chairman. “I grew up in the South. A white guy jumps out of the car with a mask on, I mean, my first reaction is self defense.”

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), 84, recounted similar experiences. He was reared in rural Arkansas, where masks were used, he said, only by those who didn’t want to be identified.

“And the only reason … you wouldn’t want to be identified, is that you are up to no good,” said Davis, another long-time CBC member. “People were very conservative thinking, and naturally, if you didn’t want to be identified, they thought you were going to do something you didn’t want everybody to know about.”

Davis is now a long way from Arkansas, representing parts of Chicago and Cook County. But he said the racial menace associated with masks still lingers as part of the current fight over whether DHS immigration agents — specifically those with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) —  should be allowed to wear masks during the course of their duties.

“It’s still a factor,” he said. “Because people — if you’re doing what is acceptable, you don’t mind people knowing that you’re doing it, even if you’re law enforcement. But if you’re doing something that is distasteful, then you’d prefer that people not know.”

The partisan fight over DHS reforms stems from two separate incidents in Minneapolis earlier in the year, when federal immigration officers shot and killed U.S. citizens protesting Trump’s deportation surge in the Twin Cities. 

In the first case, on Jan. 7, an ICE officer fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was blocking a city street in her car. DHS said she tried to run the officer over in “an act of domestic terrorism.”

In the second, on Jan. 24, two Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse who was filming deportation operations on a street in a nearby neighborhood. (DHS initially said Pretti had intended to “massacre law enforcement.”). 

In both cases, the officers who fired the shots were wearing masks concealing their identities. 

Trump administration officials have defended the masks, arguing that ICE and CBP agents are constant targets of the left, which is opposed to Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign. Given the hostile environment, the administration says, the masks are necessary to prevent agents from becoming the victims of doxxing or even physical violence. 

“If you want ICE to take the masks off, the threat level has to decrease,” Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said in a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Stop calling ICE ‘Nazis’ and ‘racists,’ stop saying they’re going to shoot people inside airports. 

“That’s going to drive the threat level down, and we can talk about masks.”

Democrats counter that no other law enforcement agencies — either state, local or federal — wear masks to do their police work. They say the masks have a more nefarious purpose, allowing DHS officers to commit violence with impunity.

“[It] is part of why these guys are so out of control,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a former state’s attorney. “I think they feel like there’s no repercussions because nobody knows who they are.”

Ivey, another Black Caucus member, also sees a parallel between the anonymity sought by organizations like the Ku Klux Klan — the notoriously hooded white supremacist group that terrorized Black communities a century ago — and the masks being worn by ICE and CBP officers today. 

“The logic behind the masks for the Klan is the same as the logic behind the masks now, which is to hide an identity,” he said. “And if you’re on the good guys side, that’s not what you should be doing.” 

The killings of Good and Pretti led Democrats to demand a number of changes governing the conduct of DHS agents as a condition of reopening the agency, of which the mask ban is just one. Republicans have resisted, and the resulting impasse has resulted in the longest partial shutdown in U.S. history: 50 days and counting.

Last month, Homan sent a letter of concessions to the Senate that featured some of the Democrats’ demands. That list included an expansion of body cameras, a ban on raids in sensitive areas like schools and hospitals; adherence to rules that officers are clearly identified; and a vow to allow congressional lawmakers to visit immigration detention facilities, which is already the law. 

Separately, Democrats won another victory when Trump fired Kristi Noem as DHS secretary. And they appeared to secure another win when Noem’s replacement, former Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), promised during his confirmation hearing to require that DHS law enforcers secure judicial warrants before entering homes or businesses in pursuit of undocumented immigrants.

The one glaring omission amid the flurry of concessions has been masks. Indeed, Homan says that if the issue is a red line for Democrats, it’s a red line for the White House, too.

“You want us to give up masks, well, you know what? No we’re not,” Homan said last month on the “Cats & Cosby Show” on WABC 770 AM. “I’m not putting one ICE officer at risk.”

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), 77, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the fraught racial history of masks in America is not quite driving the current debate over ICE reforms and DHS funding. But “it’s something that’s in the back of your mind.”

“Whenever you are in this kind of situation, it recalls the memories of what masks meant in those days,” he said. 

“My family tried to make sure that I wasn’t haunted by something as a child that could not be explained. And so we would often talk about, ‘Who was that masked man?’ — because we would watch the Lone Ranger,” the Maryland Democrat continued. “It was a different kind of mask, and it was something that had a different connotation, so it kept me from thinking about the other masked men, who were out to hurt you.”

And now?

“It’s there,” Mfume said. “It’s there.”