Masked, armed law enforcement agents who regularly violate the law and strip people of their constitutional rights is nothing new in America. They have, in fact, a long and well-documented history, including states — after years of abuse by masked men — passing laws specifically to prevent them from concealing their identities when performing law enforcement operations.
In this era, we call them Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; during the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries they called themselves the Ku Klux Klan. They often operated with the blessing of both federal and state governments, deputized and given badges and guns, and “enforced the law” while wearing their famous white hoods to conceal their individual identities.
ICE operates today with a level of anonymity, impunity and intimidation that closely parallels the Ku Klux Klan’s tactics as masked, semi-official enforcers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both used legal or quasi-legal authority, masked identities and violent or coercive tactics to carry out their missions, all without individual accountability while targeting vulnerable minorities and subverting legal norms to do so.
