Garrett Graff: ICE's Masks Are All a Lie

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/ice-s-masks-are-all-a-lie

This week, Congress is debating what reform might be acceptable for the masked fascist secret police currently occupying major American cities in Democratic-run states — a supposedly civilian law enforcement agency that, in any other country, US journalists wouldn’t hesitate to label breezily “a right-wing paramilitary militia loyal to the regime that is staging a terror campaign against separatist regions led by key figures of the political opposition.”

Today, the leaders of ICE and CBP will be front and center on Capitol Hill, testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee. First and foremost on the Democrats’ list of reform demands is that ICE and CBP remove the masks that have been ubiquitous in their immigration enforcement and day-to-day operations since Donald Trump took office last year.

To hear the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing over the possibility that ICE officers and CBP agents might be prohibited from wearing masks by congressional reforms is to imagine that these agents work in some impossibly hostile environment where the slightest glimpses of their faces might lead to danger for everyone they’ve ever known. In absurd media interviews, like this one on CNBC yesterday, Republican officials are making it seem like working immigration in the US is as dangerous as being an honest narcotics investigator in the heart of cartel-land in Mexico or Latin America.

Do not be fooled.

Every piece of data we have actually shows that to be false.

A CATO Institute study last month found that 2025 — in theory a wildly dangerous year, according to Kristi Noem and other administration officials, when threats and assault against agents and officers leapt by insane astronomical figures, like 413 percent, 1150 percent, or even 8000 percent!!!! — was actually the second-safest year ever for ICE officers and Border Patrol agents.

*snip*