I enjoyed Chloris Creator’s recent story “Make ICE Take Off Their Masks”, and I’ve seen a few jibes recently abou alpha males who wouldn’t wear masks during the pandemic but are wearing them now — does that make them beta males?
What really caught my attention though was the Cato Institute article from May 12, 2025:
ICE Agents Routinely Mask Up When Seizing People—That’s Wrong
Leave aside the question of when, if at all, it is proper to prosecute bystanders under these circumstances. Why is it considered acceptable for ICE enforcers to wear masks to hide their identity in the first place? They did so last week, a video shows, when they arrested Newark, NJ Mayor Ras Baraka as he protested at a detention facility. A casual search reveals that ICE agents have worn face coverings, ski masks, and the like in raids and stops reported from around the country (Westminster, MD; Douglas County, CO; Great Barrington, MA; Bellingham, WA). Federal agents wore masks when they abducted Turkish grad student Rümeysa Öztürk off a street near her Boston-area home. (She was freed by a judge last week.) The Trump Department of Homeland Security appears to have made it standard practice.
At what point will we as a nation find ourselves with a secret police?
People who mask themselves before street confrontations ordinarily do so to avoid legal and public accountability, especially when they are up to no good.
When you’ve lost the Cato Institute….
