Arizona leaders say masked ICE agents and arrests at courthouses endanger the public by eroding trust in law enforcement. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Arizona‘s elected leaders are calling for an end to ICE agents using masks and arresting people at their court hearings, saying the practices jeopardize public trust in law enforcement and flout the U.S. Constitution.
The criticism comes as immigration enforcement actions have ramped up across the country in a bid to deliver on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to oversee the largest mass deportation effort in history.
Tasked with a 3,000 daily arrest quota, federal immigration officials have resorted to focusing on easy targets, carrying out workplace raids, stopping people at gas stations and hardware store parking lots and detaining people who show up to mandatory immigration court hearings.
Masked officers in plainclothes have become a common theme, sparking angry protests as public disapproval of the Trump administration’s aggressive approach climbs.
In Phoenix, more than a dozen immigrants attending mandatory hearings were arrested minutes after their cases were dismissed by federal prosecutors. After advocates mounted a defensive campaign to help escort people to their hearings, ICE agents pivoted to identifying the cars of migrants and pulling them over streets away. It’s unclear how many people were arrested as a result.
Similar to raids in other states, immigration officials carrying out enforcement actions in Arizona have made efforts to avoid being identified, often covering their faces and travelling in unmarked vehicles. In Tucson, ICE agents posed as utility workers to convince a woman to share information about her neighbor’s whereabouts.
Dem AGs criticize ICE agents for “secret police tactics”
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes joined 20 other Democratic attorneys general in lambasting the controversial masking practice in a letter to Congress. In a written statement accompanying the letter, Mayes warned that allowing ICE agents to hide their identities would be detrimental for the relationship between Arizonans and local law enforcement and opens the door to criminal activity.
“Officers across Arizona do their jobs safely in uniform, without masks daily. ICE agents should too,” Mayes said. “Secret police tactics like this erode trust in law enforcement and allows criminals to dangerously impersonate officers – which is already happening.”
Just last month, a Philadelphia man claimed he was an ICE agent, threatened to “take undocumented employees into custody” at an automobile shop and zip-tied a woman before fleeing with $1,000.
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In their letter, the attorneys general urged Congress to pass legislation that would prohibit federal agents from wearing masks and require them to show ID and agency-identifying insignia.
Todd Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has defended the tactic as necessary to keep agents safe from harassment. That argument was dismissed by the letter’s authors, who wrote that the risks to public safety and civil liberties outweigh that concern. And, they added, the federal government’s enthusiastic advocacy of its ICE operations directly contradicts that purported fear.
“As a general rule, if the federal authorities are confident that their practices are lawful and just, they should not fear identifying themselves,” reads the letter. “The Administration is willing to tout its arrests and tactics in press releases, social media posts, and speeches, but refuses to take ownership or accountability for their policies on the ground in our communities.”
Last month, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed the No Masks for ICE Act, which would require ICE agents to wear clearly visible identification and ban the use of face coverings, except in limited circumstances. But the measure is unlikely to move forward in the Republican-majority House. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has previously backed the right of ICE agents to conceal their faces.
Courthouse arrests spark questions
At the same time, a coalition of 24 Democratic U.S. Senators, including Arizona’s Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, are demanding answers from federal officials about ICE’s recent targeting of immigration courthouses. In a July 11 letter, the group criticized the effort as a departure from the Trump administration’s touted goal of arresting the “worst of the worst.”
“These actions prevent noncitizens from having their fair day in court and raise serious legal and due process concerns,” the senators wrote. “They also make clear that this Administration is not targeting the worst criminals and threats to public safety, instead redirecting staff and resources away from drug trafficking and human trafficking and towards these operations targeting noncriminal immigrants who are following the law and showing up for their day in court.”
While Trump and federal immigration officials have repeatedly claimed their deportation campaign is focused on expelling criminals from the country, data surrounding arrests clearly shows the opposite is occurring. As of June 29 of this year, according to the most recent ICE statistics, 71.7% of the more than 57,000 people detained had no criminal conviction at all.
And while the agency assigns detainees a threat level assessment on a scale of 1 to 3, 84% of detainees at the agency’s 201 facilities nationwide didn’t fall anywhere on that scale.
In their letter, the Democrats wrote that staking out immigration courtrooms and arresting people attending hearings doesn’t ensure public safety, and in fact works against that goal, by encouraging migrants to miss their mandatory appointments.
“This manipulation of existing laws to enact this Administration’s mass deportation agenda is creating chaos in our immigration system while doing nothing to make our communities safer,” reads the letter.
The group of two dozen senators requested more information from Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Lyons about each of their agencies’ guidance on the courthouse arrests and the number of migrants who were arrested and deported as a result, by July 25.
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This post was originally authored and published by Gloria Rebecca Gomez from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
