*LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell was emphatic at a information convention days earlier than the January 30 nationwide anti-ICE protests. He wouldn’t authorize any LAPD enforcement of the California state regulation thatbans ICE brokers from carrying masks.
McDonnell’s cause for non-compliance was easy. He contended it could pit one regulation enforcement company, particularly the LAPD, in direct battle with one other regulation enforcement company, ICE.
McDonnell was not the one native regulation enforcement official who took that stance. In November 2025, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors handed an anti-masking ordinance. It additionally took impact in January 2026. It was little greater than symbolism. L.A. County Sheriff officers immediately stated that the division wouldn’t implement the ordinance.
McDonnell’s and the sheriff’s refusal to implement the anti-mask rule drew a great deal of criticism. Nevertheless, the brutal actuality is that he couldn’t implement the regulation even when he needed to. It had nothing to do with potential clashes between two regulation enforcement businesses. It had every little thing to do with federal regulation, energy, supremacy, and Trump.
An indignant Trump in a July 2025 Fox Information Interview made that clear. He known as ICE brokers “nice patriots” and lambasted Democrats for allegedly placing “them in nice hazard, large hazard.” A pack of GOP senators promptly took the cue. In September 2025, they launched the Senate invoice, “Defending Regulation Enforcement from Doxxing Act.” It could slap fines and imprisonment on anybody who publicly recognized an ICE officer.
The lone ranger mask-up of ICE brokers has been one of many single greatest public outrages about ICE brokers. As of January 2026, practically twenty states banned ICE brokers from carrying masks. California was among the many first out of the door on the anti-mask ban with its legislative ban in September 2025.
This has performed nothing to cease the observe. The states that ban ICE brokers from masking are top-heavy Democratic states. The congressional lawmakers who launched the anti-masking prohibitions are practically all Democrats. No courts have upheld any of the bans.
The bans have gone nowhere for a number of causes. One is the Structure’s Supremacy Clause. Although it has been known as obscure and topic to debate and interpretation, the precise wording, because the SCOTUS made plain, is “the states haven’t any energy” to “retard, impede, burden, or in any method management, the operations of the constitutional legal guidelines enacted by Congress to hold into execution the powers vested within the normal authorities. “
In different phrases, federal regulation at all times supersedes state regulation. The clause does another factor that makes it just about unassailable on the subject of federal regulation enforcement brokers. It grants them close to whole immunity from any checks or restraints on what they’ll and may’t do when performing their enforcement duties.
Homeland Safety, ICE, and Trump have added the next bar to unmasking ICE brokers. It repeatedly cites the Homeland Safety directive that claims that masks are very important to guard ICE brokers from being recognized and presumably focused for assault. That match ins with the doubtful narrative that Trump, Homeland Safety, and ICE, by no means tire of harping on. That’s why ICE brokers are below relentless bodily assault. The determine tossed out is upwards of 1 thousand alleged assaults since 2024.
Homeland Safety officers are purposely obscure when challenged on simply who has been attacked, the place they’ve been attacked, and how much assaults. The deliberate impression is that ICE brokers regularly face bodily assaults, which supposedly are life-threatening.
Trump and Homeland Safety are adamant. ICE brokers will proceed to put on masks. Nevertheless, the dangling query that neither will reply is why police and numerous different state and native regulation enforcement businesses, and different federal regulation enforcement businesses such because the FBI, have by no means worn masks within the efficiency of their regulation enforcement duties, and earlier than Trump, that included ICE brokers.
Additionally they conduct raids, sweeps, serve warrants, and interact in usually hazardous day-to-day policing. This additionally places them doubtlessly in hurt’s approach. What makes ICE brokers any totally different from different regulation enforcement businesses that they require particular protecting safeguards that different regulation enforcement businesses have by no means used or claimed they should use?
The SCOTUS, nevertheless, did appear to supply a small window to problem ICE masking. It held {that a} federal regulation enforcement agent doesn’t get an computerized go of immunity simply because she or he is appearing in the middle of his or her employment. However simply what and who determines what that employment entails and whether or not that employment is throughout the bounds of federal regulation is unclear. Trump, Homeland Safety, and ICE reply that each one immigration enforcement is squarely throughout the bounds of federal regulation enforcement and its brokers are immune from any restraints. The restraint on this case is the carrying of masks, hoods, caps, and anything they wish to put on to protect their identification.
So long as that’s the case, ICE gained’t be unmasked in L.A. or, sadly, anyplace else.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an creator and political analyst. His newest e-book is The ICE Capturing Scorecard (Amazon book and Center Passage Press PB). He hosts the weekly information and points commentary radio present The Hutchinson Report on Wednesdays, 6 PM PST, 9 PM EST at ktymgospel.web. and Fb Livestreamed at https://www.fb.com/earl.o.hutchinson
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