Raskin suggests ICE masks are hiding Jan. 6 insurrectionists
At a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) raised a question that would have sounded paranoid not long ago: whether ICE’s growing use of masks during arrests is really about officer safety, or about concealing who some of those officers are.
Raskin pointed out that at least two individuals who participated in the January 6 insurrection are now employed by the Department of Justice. Against that backdrop, the federal government’s sudden enthusiasm for masked law enforcement starts to look less like protection and more like anonymity. Raskin warned that hiding faces is not a neutral choice, and asked why federal agents now need to obscure their identities from the public they claim to serve.
This concern is not abstract. ICE has increasingly deployed masked agents in public operations, a sharp departure from longstanding norms around identification and accountability. If insurrectionists are now embedded within federal law enforcement, obscuring faces conveniently shields them from recognition, scrutiny, and consequences.
Civilian law enforcement is not supposed to work like this in a democracy. Badges, names, and visible identities are not costume elements. They are accountability mechanisms. When armed agents of the state operate anonymously, the public loses the ability to know who is acting in its name and whether those individuals have already demonstrated contempt for democratic institutions. It is also a free ticket to operate without accountability. Anonymity is not just concealment. It is permission.
Raskin’s warning merits investigation. The Trump administration has pardoned January 6 rioters, rewritten history regarding the attack on the Capitol, and installed officials who worked to overturn the 2020 election. At the same time, ICE has expanded its powers, escalated its tactics, and adopted the posture of a paramilitary force rather than a civilian agency.
Taken together, this picture is deeply unsettling. If the government is protecting the identities of agents who once attacked Congress, it is not merely rewriting history. It is preparing for a future in which loyalty matters more than the law and anonymity replaces accountability. Remember that Speaker Johnson refuses to honor the Capitol Police who defended our democracy. MAGA Mike’s alignment is not subtle.
Masks don’t just hide faces. They hide histories. When the state decides those histories are best left unseen, it’s worth asking what else it no longer wants the public to recognize.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” –George Orwell, 1984
not remotely helpful, but... yes we presumed that much. also they're hiding that they have criminal records, unpaid child-support, dismissed from multiple police forces, gang affiliations, and possibly/ironically undocumented immigrants. many of these charmers are ICE goons because they couldn't hold any other form of employment. m'kay @#$!
# ...adopted the posture of a paramilitary force rather than a civilian agency.
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It is now a domestic terrorist organization that has *impunity*, thanks to infinite pardons by The Criminal*.
They must be held accountable in *no* uncertain terms.... remember, fear works *both* ways.
Speaking of 'no uncertain terms':
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough.
And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
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*'Lord Dampnut' is no more. Referring to him as 'The Criminal' is less ambiguous, and more fitting.
Saves a few keystrokes, too, & I'm a lazy bastid....