ICE Masks Are Just Modern Ku Klux Klan Hoods [Op-Ed]
Donald Trump is barking over a proposed Democratic bill that would bar ICE and Border Patrol agents from wearing masks and covering their badges while on duty.
He’s claiming that Democrats “must hate America” for pushing such a bill. Which is ironic, given that Trump has spent years cheerleading for an American immigration policy that borrows its aesthetics and tactics straight from the Ku Klux Klan, including the convenient use of masks to terrorize the vulnerable while staying anonymous.
But this performative outrage about unmasking isn’t about officer safety or patriotism. It’s about protecting the same tradition of faceless, unaccountable violence that has always marked American repression. Trump knows exactly how powerful a mask can be when you want to terrorize without consequence. His own father was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens in 1927, back when hoods were the uniform of choice for bigots who wanted to raid and lynch with impunity while avoiding responsibility. The hood is the perfect accessory for cowards, and ICE masks are their modern update.
Trump’s real complaint is that unmasking would humanize the victims and implicate the perpetrators. And God forbid we acknowledge that this isn’t some neutral bureaucratic process but an organized racist infliction of suffering on people trying to survive. Trump and his allies want these agents to be able to slap on a mask, break down doors at 3 a.m., haul families away, and go home for dinner with no one knowing their names. They want the terror without the guilt. The hoods may have changed style, but the impulse is exactly the same.
What does the bill actually say?
Simply that federal agents enforcing immigration laws shouldn’t be able to hide who they are. That’s it. It’s about basic transparency and accountability. And yet Trump is shrieking as if it’s an existential threat to the republic. Why? Because he knows the effect of taking away the mask: it forces responsibility. It turns abstract cruelty into personal choice. And it reveals the humanity of the victims and the culpability of the perpetrators.
Trump loves the aesthetics of unaccountable force. He always has. In July 2020, when unidentified federal agents showed up in unmarked vans in Portland and grabbed protesters off the street, he praised them. He threatened to send federal agents into “Democrat-run cities” without local permission, bragging about crushing dissent.
He celebrated police who used tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters outside the White House for a photo-op with a Bible. He told police officers in 2017 not to be “too nice” when arresting suspects, encouraging rougher treatment. He threatened to deploy the military under the Insurrection Act to put down protests in the summer of 2020, describing American streets like a war zone to justify force.
He defended Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people during unrest in Kenosha, praising him as someone who was “trying to get away” and acting in “self-defense.” He repeatedly called for shooting looters, invoking violent crackdowns reminiscent of past police abuses against civil rights activists. He urged governors to “dominate” protesters, mocking them for being weak if they didn’t unleash their police.
Trump wants government enforcers who can operate with impunity, who can make whole communities afraid to resist because they don’t know who’s coming for them next. That’s the same logic the Klan used when they donned hoods and terrorized Black communities. The goal wasn’t just anonymity; it was intimidation. It told Black people and other targeted groups that white supremacist violence was everywhere and no one could be held responsible.
ICE and U.S. border protection have their own long history of abuse and impunity. Border Patrol agents have been caught sharing violently racist memes and joking about migrant deaths. ICE has separated mothers from babies, retaliated against immigrants who spoke out, and “lost” children in the system.
Many agents routinely obscure or remove nameplates. The idea that they “need” this anonymity for safety is rich coming from a political movement that cheers when teachers get doxxed for including LGBTQ books or when librarians are threatened for “woke” reading lists. They want school employees and activists to live in fear of being named, harassed, and punished. Transparency is apparently only dangerous when it threatens the people enforcing state violence.
Trump’s entire political brand is built on stoking fear of immigrants. He called them “rapists” and “animals.” He oversaw family separation policies that traumatized thousands of children. He threatened to shoot migrants in the legs. He made cruelty the point. Deliberate and public cruelty designed to make people afraid to even try coming here. And he wants the agents carrying out that cruelty to stay anonymous. Because if they’re faceless and untouchable, then the violence doesn’t have to feel personal. No one ever has to answer for it.
That’s why he’s so desperate to preserve the mask. Because unmasking ruins the fantasy of righteous, impersonal enforcement. It forces the country to confront that these are real people choosing to inflict harm on other real people. It denies them the moral cover of being mere cogs in the machine. It opens the door to accountability. And Trump can’t have that, because accountability is poison to the entire politics of fear he’s built.
His father, Fred Trump, understood that dynamic perfectly. The KKK hoods weren’t just about secrecy; they were about collective power. They let ordinary white people commit extraordinary violence while pretending they were just like everyone else when the sun came up. The hood was both a disguise and a threat. And though Trump himself doesn’t wear one, he’s inherited that same impulse. He wants state power to be able to terrorize without consequence.
Meanwhile, Trump’s screaming about Democrats hating America is the height of projection. If you love America, you should want its agents identifiable and accountable. You should want them held to the highest standards of conduct precisely because they wield the power of the state. Trump doesn’t want that. He wants them to be his shock troops, enforcing a racialized border regime in the shadows.
The truth is simple: the Klan’s hoods and ICE’s obscured nameplates serve the same function. They both allow the state (or its proxies) to terrorize with plausible deniability. They both depend on fear to enforce social hierarchy. And they both rely on the cowardice of those who want to inflict harm without ever being recognized for it.
We should rip the masks off. Make them show their badges. Make them answer for what they do. Because real patriotism doesn’t mean cheering on secret police tactics or protecting government agents from accountability. It means refusing to let our public servants become a faceless mob. It means naming them. And it means remembering that anyone who fights that transparency is fighting for the right to terrorize in our name without consequence.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.
SEE ALSO:
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