At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, the Democratic attorney general said she doesn’t “want to see” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing masks while conducting law enforcement activities in Arizona, which she called “dangerous” and “unacceptable.” She’s even expressed as much to ICE leadership in the state, she said.
“Real lawmen and women don’t wear masks,” Mayes told reporters.
The sight of masked and anonymous ICE agents abducting people has become a common one throughout the country since President Donald Trump reassumed office and began his push for mass deportations. In Arizona, ICE agents wearing neck gaiters have been photographed hauling immigrants away after their hearings at immigration court and arresting people in their homes. In fact, it’s rare to see an ICE agent without a mask.
Members of the Trump administration have claimed that ICE agents must conceal their identities to avoid “doxxing,” or the practice of publishing someone’s personal information online. On Tuesday, Mayes called that justification “bullshit.” Law enforcement agents should not operate under a cloak of secrecy when operating in public, Mayes added.
“Law enforcement across the state of Arizona does their jobs honorably,” Mayes said. “They do their jobs professionally. They do their jobs every day without masking themselves and hiding who they are.”
It doesn’t seem that ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, care to listen to Mayes’ views. The attorney general said she met with “high-level” ICE and Homeland Security Investigations officers in Arizona on a June 16 video call to express her “dissatisfaction” over masking. Somewhat ironically, Mayes declined to name the officials she addressed. At any rate, that conversation “didn’t get anywhere,” Mayes said.
“It would appear to me that it’s their policy to mask,” Mayes said.
ICE did not immediately respond to questions from Phoenix New Times about the meeting and its policy on masking.
Obvious dangers
The practice of wearing a mask while enforcing the law among law enforcement agencies is “extremely rare” and “it’s just not something we’ve ever seen before,” Mayes said. Agents with the attorney general’s office don’t mask themselves when engaged in law enforcement activities, she added, only doing so in “certain undercover operations where masking is necessary.”The trend of faceless immigration cops carries obvious dangers, opening the door for “bad actors” to take advantage of the fear that has been injected into communities to “kidnap people or carjack people,” Mayes said. Experts have warned that ICE agents’ masking makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers — and they have.
In February, two people impersonating ICE agents tried to enter a Temple University dorm in Philadelphia. That same month in North Carolina, a man pretending to be an ICE agent sexually assaulted a woman after threatening to deport her. In Florida, two men pretending to be ICE agents performed a fake traffic stop in April, asking for immigration documents and status.
Democrats, immigration advocates and many libertarians wary of police misconduct have decried the use of masks as authoritarian. “They don’t like it when protesters” do it, wrote immigration activist Albert Rivera in a text. “So why should THEY even wear masks?” In California, state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would prohibit immigration agents from wearing masks in the state.
No such measure is forthcoming in Arizona, though, and it doesn’t appear Mayes has the pull to force a change by herself. Mayes, whose central Phoenix headquarters shares a parking lot with ICE’s Phoenix field office, said her office has had “great relationships with our federal partners,” but actions like masking “strain those relationships.” She’s “thinking that through” how to press the issue and “make it clear to these guys how dangerous this is."
“I do not accept it as the top law enforcement officer in the state of Arizona,” Mayes said.
Without a political lever to pull, Mayes may have to.
