State legislators from Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania banded together Tuesday to call for a ban on federal agents wearing masks while conducting immigration enforcement.
Lawmakers from the three Democrat-led states held a press conference during a National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Boston to promote their state-level bills that would restrict mask-wearing by law enforcement officers, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Rep. Jim Hawkins, an Attleboro Democrat, filed the Massachusetts bill last month. He said he was spurred to do so after a few specific ICE arrests in his city, which he described as “heavy-handed incidents.”
“We’ve all been seeing this in the news, and I can say for me, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this, how bad it’s become,” Hawkins said.
He said he doesn’t “want to be one of these people who didn’t do anything because he wanted to protect his job.”
Hawkins and the other legislators backing mask restrictions say that when law enforcement officers conceal their identities, it erodes public trust and can heighten tensions with the community.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons has defended the practice of agents covering their faces in remarks at a June news conference in Boston and in a July television interview. He’s said that officers and their families can be targeted with threats and harassment.
“I’ve said it publicly before, I’m not a proponent of the masks,” Lyons told CBS’s “Face the Nation” last month. “However, if that’s a tool that the men and women of ICE to keep themselves and their family safe, then I will allow it.”
State lawmakers wouldn’t be able to rewrite federal ICE policy, but the legislators who back the bills say they still have a role to play.
“Federal agents may be operating within our states, but they are still subject to the laws of our states,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Emily Kinkead said. “And so if we have rules about how law enforcement and other agencies are to act with relation to the public, then they are also subject to those laws.”
New York state Sen. Pat Fahy, who introduced the bill in her state, said the lawmakers “welcome” the possibility of the issue ending up in court.
“But we think it’s important that we call this out given the fear and as you heard, the undermining that this is of law enforcement as a whole,” Fahy said.
The Massachusetts bill would make it a misdemeanor for any state, local or federal law enforcement officer to “wear any mask or personal disguise while interacting with the public in the performance of their duties,” except for medical masks or those worn to protect against exposure to smoke or toxins during an emergency.
It would also carve out an exception for SWAT teams using gear to keep themselves safe.
Along with Rep. Hawkins, 21 other Democrats in the Massachusetts Legislature and one independent lawmaker have signed on to the bill in support. About a month after it was filed, the bill has not yet been referred to a committee for review or scheduled for a public hearing.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
