Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wear masks, President Donald Trump and his supporters have insisted, because if they have to show their faces, then they will be doxxed. More specifically, Republicans have argued, bystanders could take photos of agents’ faces, identify them and use that information to harm them. But after dispatching ICE to 14 major U.S. airports where unpaid Transportation Security Administration workers are quitting or calling out sick, Trump said Monday on social media that “I would greatly appreciate…NO MASKS” at the airports.

That makes no sense. Set aside the fact that ICE agents don’t have the training to do what TSA agents do; if there were a legitimate threat to ICE agents who show their faces outside airports, that threat would be just as legitimate when ICE agents were inside airports.

During the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, Democrats have demanded reforms that include requiring ICE agents to show their faces. Trump’s social media post on Monday signaled to Democrats that talk of doxxing was always a ruse and that facial coverings for ICE officers aren’t non-negotiable, as Republicans have previously insisted.

But we always knew it was a ruse. An untold number of law enforcement officers in the U.S. go to work every day not only with their faces visible but also with their names on their chests. To argue that ICE agents are vulnerable to doxxing by showing their faces is to argue that all law enforcement officers who show their faces are. But other law enforcement officers work with their faces visible, which was an indication, long ago, that ICE officers could ditch the masks, too.

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TSA officer reacts to ICE presence at airports: ‘They’re not trained to do what we do’ March 23, 2026 / 05:46

They did so at airports on Monday; their faces were clearly visible. Less clear was what the agents were doing at the airports. Photos and videos from some airports showed ICE officers walking or standing around, doing little — if anything — to relieve TSA agents.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, had indicated in a Sunday statement that ICE couldn’t be much help, writing: “ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security. TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints — skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”

The apparent inability of ICE agents to do anything to speed up the long security lines at airports isn’t the only thing we’ve learned about the agency in recent days. “Trump realized ICE agents don’t need masks in airports,” Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on “The Last Word” on Monday night. “If they don’t need masks in airports, then I don’t understand why they need masks when they’re wandering around communities across the country. We now know they don’t need the masks. That’s good news.”

In February, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted to social media a video he said was recorded in Mexico. Axios described the video as “showing three armed men, one masked, setting a gas station ablaze.” Lee wrote: “Cartel hitmen wear masks. Leftists aren’t complaining.” It was such a spectacularly bone-headed comment that Lee deleted the post, but not before his Democratic colleagues thanked him for making their point. “Yes. Cartel hitmen wear masks,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded. “That’s why ICE shouldn’t.”

Lee’s unintentional connection between certain kinds of masks and criminality made it clear why the sight of people who wear such masks can terrify the public. We may not reflexively know the difference between a masked person trying to break the law and a masked person who is the law, and the U.S. government should not subject us to such fear and confusion. Americans have also been made to believe that our law enforcement officials are supposed to be held accountable to the public, but accountability is thwarted, if not made impossible, when officers are hiding their faces behind masks.

As Johns Hopkins professor Stuart Schrader, the author of “Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing,” told me for a column in June, “During the Cold War, the idea was that the fascist regimes all embodied this kind of unified, secretive, unaccountable type of police force and the United States had a liberal tradition that was a contrast.”

The president’s opposition to ICE agents wearing masks in airports seems to be his acknowledgment of the sense of terror and unease masked agents can evoke. But at the same time, Trump asking those same agents to keep their masks on outside airports is an admission that he’s fine with ICE provoking fear and trepidation everywhere else.

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