Who's that masked man? An ICE agent

It's open season on ICE agents and others in law enforcement who work with them. No wonder they're masking up. On July 4, armed activists shot a local police officer in the neck during what authorities described as a "planned ambush" near an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas. In Portland, Oregon, that same day, rioters and police exchanged blows. On Monday, a Border Patrol official was shot near a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas. The Department of Homeland Security says there has been a 700% increase in assaults against ICE agents. And yet some Democrats see ICE agents doing their jobs as the problem. In May, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz asserted, "Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets, they're in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons." On July 1, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., posted on X, "ICE is acting like a terrorist force. People across the country of all legal statuses — including U.S. citizens — are being kidnapped and disappeared off the street by masked men." Fourteen Senate Democrats sent a letter to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons that argued ICE has been engaging in "unprecedented numbers of immigration raids" and some agents have been operating "without wearing identifying uniforms and while masked." President Donald Trump himself observed that there were few complaints when masked protesters effectively shut down Columbia and Harvard, so why the double-standard in opposing masks for ICE? As Trump Border Czar Tom Homan has explained, agents wear masks to "protect themselves and their families." Of course I don't like the idea of law enforcement officers wearing masks. When agents mask up to conceal their identities from menacing zealots, it's hard for the good-faith public to tell if they're looking at good guys or gang members. But ICE agents already risk their personal safety to do their jobs. If they're masking up, it's because of activists who take photos of their faces so they can dox agents and harass their families. Where's the empathy from the left? Criminals wear masks so they can victimize others without penalty. Ditto Antifa and their ilk. Once you see the ringleaders with their heads fully covered and their bodies swaddled in Kevlar, you know their mission is to hurt and destroy — and not get caught so they can do it again. They're not out to convince the public. They just want to burn it down. Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento has sympathy for those ICE agents who mask up to prevent activists from doxing their families. If one of his kids were an ICE agent, Rushford told me, he'd want them to be masked. "Things have turned on their head," Rushford noted, when the media and blue states identify agents who are removing gang members as if they are the criminals. How did we get here? For years, including the two years when Democrats controlled the White House, Senate and House, the left decided it didn't have to change federal immigration law, to which they objected. Why risk losing elections? Why forfeit an issue that's been used to appeal to the grievance left? So instead, Democrats proclaimed themselves as too superior to enforce democratically enacted laws, and they hailed their turf as "sanctuary" cities and states. But "sanctuary" was just a word. It had no force. In short, they blew it. They didn't bank on Trump winning in 2024 and sticking to his promise to enforce the law -- as in, really enforce it. So now they are targeting honest civil servants and fomenting a civil war. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com.