Caffeinated Politics

In a democratic society, government power is supposed to be exercised openly. Accountability is not a luxury that can be tossed aside when it is uncomfortable. Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement has increasingly adopted the practice of covering agents’ faces during operations that we witness daily on newscasts or in our newspapers. ICE agents appear daily wearing balaclavas and masks to obscure their identities. For the past year, we have seen those men turn public actions into something closer to a covert paramilitary display than the work of a civilian law‑enforcement agency. And it needs to stop.

These face-covered men should alarm anyone who believes in transparent government. No other major law‑enforcement body in the United States routinely hides its officers’ faces while carrying out the ordinary business of their agency. Police departments, sheriffs, state troopers, and FBI agents—none of them conduct standard operations with concealed identities. They wear badges. They show their faces. They understand that public trust depends on public visibility.

ICE should be held to the same standard. Our home contacted both of our U.S. Senators with concerns about this matter. Something must be wrong with Senator Ron Johnson’s franking privileges, as he never responds. Meanwhile, Senator Tammy Baldwin keeps constituents apprised of her work and views on a bevy of headline issues. I was heartened to read her opinion about masked ICE agents.

What is most galling is that ICE agents feel they can detain, question, or remove someone from their home anonymously. Power without identification is power without accountability. And power without accountability is the oldest recipe for abuse. (So what Jim Winn, my high school civics teacher, would repeat to us today.)

Some defenders of the practice claim it protects agents from retaliation. Oh, please! That argument completely collapses under scrutiny. Every other law enforcement agency faces the same risks, yet they do not hide their identities as a matter of routine. Accountability is not optional simply because a job is difficult. ICE just needs to grow up.

History offers a sobering reminder of why masked state power is dangerous. Across eras and continents, governments that hid the identities of their enforcers did so for a reason. In many cases, they wanted to insulate those thuggish enforcers from scrutiny and to shield the state from responsibility.

We are well aware that in Latin America’s military dictatorships, masked officers carried out raids and detentions in ways that left victims with no ability to identify who had taken them. In utterly horrific circumstances, such as in Nazi Germany, their goon squads typically did not hide their faces during brutal operations.

When a government begins to normalize masked, unidentifiable officers, it signals a shift away from democratic norms and toward something far more troubling. A free society cannot accept a system where government agents can exercise immense authority while shielded from public recognition. If ICE is acting within the law, they should have no reason to hide. If they are acting outside of it, the public has every reason to demand transparency.

The solution is simple: require ICE agents conducting public operations to show their faces and display identifying information, just as every other law‑enforcement agency does. Accountability should not be negotiable. It is the foundation of legitimate government power.

When the state acts in our name, it must do so openly. Anything less is unacceptable.