Who Was That Masked Man?
It didn’t take long for us to almost expect headlines like this from TNR: Masked ICE Agents Detain U.S. Citizen Who Is Nine Months Pregnant. But over the camouflage-armored bodies and masked faces, there’s now another disturbing layer to this story. As we move forward, how can people be sure whether the paramilitary-resembling groups storming their neighborhoods are actually ICE agents, or law enforcement officials at all? When six armed agents “dressed as though they had parachuted into a war zone” showed up in the small town of Great Barrington (apparently to protect the community and the country from a gardener pulling weeds), a pair of local boutique owners tried to figure out what was going on outside their store. “‘These guys had guns hanging all over them,’ said Shafiroff, but they otherwise had no conformity to their dress. ‘None of them had the same letters on the front of their vests. Some of them didn’t even have letters, but it said ‘Police’ across the back … The women asked to see IDs or warrants, or even the names of the alleged criminals these agents were there to track down. They refused. One briefly flashed a badge, Stiner recounted, but would not let her inspect it even to see what agency it was for. ‘It could have been from Cracker Jacks,’ she recalled.” WaPo (Gift Article): The secret police descending on Small Town, USA. “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).” Apparently masks are enraging when they’re used to prevent the spread of a deadly virus but they’re worth celebrating and cosplaying when used to terrorize communities. Ordinarily, we’d refer to this an extreme irony, but irony got deported a few weeks ago.
