Masked immigration officials are storming towns and arresting people.
Maybe they really were immigration officers, just as they claimed. Or maybe they were a ragtag vigilante group, arbitrarily snatching brown-looking people off the street.
“It could have been like a band of the Proud Boys or something,” said Linda Shafiroff, recounting the agents who showed up outside her office in masks and tactical gear and refused to show IDs, warrants or even the names of any criminals they were supposedly hunting.
As unrest and military troops overtake Los Angeles, terrifying scenes are also unfolding in smaller communities around the country. They, too, are being invaded by what resembles a secret police force, often indistinguishable from random thugs.
Shafiroff and business partner Sarah Stiner own a boutique home-design and construction firm in Great Barrington, a New England town largely populated by artists, aging hippies and affluent second-home-owners. On May 30, around 11 a.m., six armed agents showed up outside the women’s office. The agents were dressed as though they had parachuted into a war zone, rather than a small town where the crosswalks are painted in rainbows.
Maybe they really were immigration officers, just as they claimed. Or maybe they were a ragtag vigilante group, arbitrarily snatching brown-looking people off the street.
“It could have been like a band of the Proud Boys or something,” said Linda Shafiroff, recounting the agents who showed up outside her office in masks and tactical gear and refused to show IDs, warrants or even the names of any criminals they were supposedly hunting.
As unrest and military troops overtake Los Angeles, terrifying scenes are also unfolding in smaller communities around the country. They, too, are being invaded by what resembles a secret police force, often indistinguishable from random thugs.
Shafiroff and business partner Sarah Stiner own a boutique home-design and construction firm in Great Barrington, a New England town largely populated by artists, aging hippies and affluent second-home-owners. On May 30, around 11 a.m., six armed agents showed up outside the women’s office. The agents were dressed as though they had parachuted into a war zone, rather than a small town where the crosswalks are painted in rainbows.
“It could have been from Cracker Jacks,” she recalled.
The gardener did not appear to understand what these officers were asking him. Another man who had been working the landscaping project with him immediately went into the women’s design office and shut the door upon seeing the masked agents arrive. The agents didn’t try to follow him, Shafiroff said.
When the business owners repeatedly asked the agents to prove who they were, the agents said they didn’t need to show identification, and accused their interlocutors of promoting lawlessness. “You want people driving drunk in here?” one of them asked, according to a cellphone video. Shafiroff replied: “I don’t want people driving drunk. I have asked for IDs.”
The gardener was eventually put in the back of an unmarked car and driven away. Shafiroff, who described the incident as part of the new “police state,” said she has since heard through mutual acquaintances that the man is being detained in an immigration facility, perhaps near Boston. She said she had been told the worker’s family was unable to determine his whereabouts for several days. (My attempts to contact the man or his family have been unsuccessful.)
The business partners, who have received threats in the days after the incident as a result of coverage by local newspapers, had good reason to question who these cloaked agents were.
It’s easy to buy tactical gear online. And around the country, bigots and criminals have already begun taking advantage of chaotic, masked immigration raids to further their own ends. Civilians have impersonated ICE agents while committing robbery (Pennsylvania), kidnappings (Florida, South Carolina), sexual assault (North Carolina), and other forms of public intimidation (Washington state, California).
Some Democratic leaders have demanded that ICE agents show their faces and present identification when carrying out enforcement actions, so they can at least be differentiated from anonymous hooligans. Republican lawmakers have fiercely opposed such efforts, claiming that asking federal officials to identify themselves would put agents in “extreme danger.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump ordered the arrest of protesters simply for wearing masks. “MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests,” he posted on social media on Sunday. “What do these people have to hide, and why???”
This seems like a reasonable question to ask of federal law enforcement officers. America, after all, is not supposed to have a secret police force. And our country’s history of roving bands of masked men rounding up undesirables is a long, ugly one.
