Yes!!! Just shoot the unidentified scumbag bully boys!!!
MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance said Saturday that by wearing masks when enforcing federal immigration laws across the country, ICE agents could face “lawful” violence against them by people who mistake the raids for a kidnapping.
On the latest Velshi from MSNBC, Vance joined host Ali Velshi and fellow guest, author Lucan Way, a Toronto political science professor, to discuss the mass detainment and deportations by ICE under the direction of border czar Tom Homan and President Donald Trump after a judge’s order blocking some of those practices was issued on Friday.
Vance, who is co-host of the #SistersInLaw podcast along with Jill Wine-Banks and Barbara McQuade, is a former United States attorney, and spoke first on the legal implications of statements from ICE director Homan.
Velshi then asked specifically about ICE agents wearing masks, which the administration has said is for the safety of the officers, who have already faced many acts of violence and extreme threats.
Velshi asked Vance, as a former prosecutor, about the legal basis for masking agents making arrests in the ongoing raids.
“There are very serious legal restrictions around the use of, for instance, FBI agents as undercover operatives. Very strict rules regarding how it’s done, what they can do, what they can’t do,” Vance said. “But you know what I’ve never seen: a federal agent working a case due is pull a mask up so nobody knows who they are and go out and terrorize a civilian population.”
Earlier in the show, Velshi argued, “we’re witnessing a police state taking shape before our eyes,” and suggested, as did professor Way, that soon ICE will be turned to rounding up any political opponent or critic of Trump, whether it has anything to do with immigration or not.
Vance, for her part, called the practice of wearing masks “not normal” and a “danger sign,” and dismissed the idea that it might be for the safety of the ICE agents. Instead, she argued, they are less safe, because people might mistake the masked officers in these giant raids for kidnappers and become lawfully violent.
“When you’re masked like that and people don’t know who you are, someone might exercise their lawful right of self-defense to protect themselves, thinking they’re being kidnapped,” she said. “So the notion that this is for law enforcement’s protection is utterly ludicrous. And we need to do away with that.”
VELSHI: You’re a prosecutor, I want to ask you, there are legitimate reasons why some enforcement agencies, some police agencies, go undercover or, you know, do things in shadows to achieve certain things. I would assume that’s specific and, you, know, it needs to be, needs to comport with some laws.
VANCE: Exactly. There are very serious legal restrictions around the use of, for instance, FBI agents as undercover operatives. Very strict rules regarding how it’s done, what they can do, what they can’t do. But you know what I’ve never seen a federal agent working a case due is pull a mask up so nobody knows who they are and go out and terrorize a civilian population.
And I think it’s important for us at this point to be very plain-speaking when we say that this is not normal, it’s not acceptable, and it’s a danger sign. You know, we are well past the point where we can just identify danger signs and say, oh, there might be problems down the road. The problems are here, they’re in the right now.
And as we see people being pulled off the streets — you know, the danger to law enforcement, quite frankly, is that when you’re masked like that and people don’t know who you are, someone might exercise their lawful right of self-defense to protect themselves, thinking they’re being kidnapped. So the notion that this is for law enforcement’s protection is utterly ludicrous. And we need to do away with that.
