AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Since President Trump returned to office, it has become routine to see federal officers wearing masks on the job, especially as they enforce immigration law. Now some Democratic politicians want to try to force them to take the masks off. NPR law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste joins us now to talk about this. Hi, Martin.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Hi.
CHANG: OK, so yeah, for months now, we have been seeing these images of especially immigration officers wearing face masks while taking people into custody. Do you think that is likely going to change now?
KASTE: Well, there's no law right now prohibiting them from wearing those masks on the job, but Democrats in Congress do want to change that. They have a bill they call the No Secret Police Act, which would restrict the use of masks by immigration agents, though it's not really likely to pass as long as the Democrats are in the minority.
But there is more chance of legislation at the state level. The California legislature is considering a bill that makes it a - would make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement to wear masks unless police are working undercover or wearing masks for health reasons or in other certain situations. And in New York, assemblyman Tony Simone says he's following California's lead with a similar bill there. And he says he has constituents in New York who feel terrorized by the prospect of being picked up by masked police.
TONY SIMONE: We want to build trust between law enforcement and the people of the United States. They should not be masked.
KASTE: Simone adds that immigration customs enforcement officers, in his mind, should accept that being publicly identified is part of their job.
CHANG: Wait, wait, but can states even do this? Like, can they tell federal agents that they cannot wear masks?
KASTE: You know, I assumed they couldn't, but when I dug into this, apparently, it's not that clear cut. If this passes, there may be a real legal fight because - especially if the state law applies to all law enforcement officers operating in state territory. The dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, Erwin Chemerinsky, pointed out to me that federal agents already have to obey other kinds of state laws, say, stopping at stop signs.
ERWIN CHEMERINSKY: The 9th Circuit has said that the test is if a federal agent acts in, quote, "an objectively unreasonable manner," the state may bring a criminal prosecution. And so I think the question is, would a state prohibition on law enforcement wearing masks interfere with the performance of their duties? Is not wearing masks objectively reasonable?
CHANG: OK, that's a law professors perspective. What are police saying about these proposed bans on masks?
KASTE: Well, in California, some of the local police are saying they feel like they're being punished for ICE agents' overuse of masks. They say state law there already requires them to identify themselves on the job, but they still want to keep the option of covering their faces in those instances when, say, they're working crowd control and protesters with cameras are threatening to dox them. Jim Dudley used to be a commander with the San Francisco Police Department, and he told me that, even though online doxing is new, police have long faced this kind of we-know-who-you-are intimidation tactic.
JIM DUDLEY: I did get phone calls from officers' families, calling about, you know, the need for protection because somebody's calling in the middle of the night, talking about things like where their kids go to school and really personal information.
CHANG: Well, what about the federal government? Like, what's the perspective on this from ICE?
KASTE: So ICE leaders have made similar arguments here. They point to efforts by some activists to post names and faces of federal agents online, and that kind of doxing does happen. I've seen one website that organizes photos of alleged ICE employees, organized by the states where they were spotted. But what we don't know is whether this has led to actual violence. ICE recently claimed that assaults on its personnel has increased eightfold this year. But because the agency won't talk to NPR about the details of these cases, it's really hard for us to judge what connection there might be between that kind of exposure online and their officers - and any kind of violence against their officers on the job.
CHANG: Right. That is NPR's Martin Kaste. Thank you, Martin.
KASTE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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