At Donald Trump’s latest White House event, the president was asked whether he’d sign a bill to require immigration agents to do their jobs without masks. He could’ve said he’d veto such a measure, and he could’ve tried to defend the practice of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents covering their faces.
But the Republican instead responded in a deeply ugly way.
Doocy: “Cory Booker and Alex Padilla…want to require CBP and ICE officers to have legible IDs, and they don’t want CBP or ICE officers covering their faces. Would you ever sign that?”Trump: “Well, they wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country.”
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-07-09T17:58:54.485Z
Referring to Senate Democratic sponsors of a proposal on the practice, Trump said, “Well, they wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country — and they obviously do.”
To the extent that reality still has any bearing on the debate, every day, in communities nationwide, police officers do their jobs with a high degree of transparency: The public can see the officers’ faces, badge numbers, rank and, in most instances, even their last names featured on uniforms. Though many cops are forced to deal with threats and violence, there isn’t a police department in the United States that allows officers to wear masks or hide their identities while they carry out day-to-day duties.
Indeed, that’s the American norm across agencies, departments and jurisdictions. State troopers don’t wear masks. Neither do FBI agents. U.S. marshals don’t wear masks; sheriffs don’t wear masks; judges and prosecutors don’t wear masks; and Secret Service agents don’t wear masks.
But ICE agents are operating under a unique — and unnecessary — standard. Indeed, it’s become rather common in recent months to see ICE agents, acting at the president’s behest, snatching people off American streets while hiding their identities.
This doesn’t do anyone any favors, including the ICE agents themselves: If people are worried that they’re being kidnapped by criminals, they’re likely to fight back for their own safety, potentially putting agents at greater risk of harm.
With this in mind, two Democratic senators — New Jersey’s Cory Booker and California’s Alex Padilla — this week introduced new legislation called the Visible Identification Standards for Immigration-Based Law Enforcement Act (or VISIBLE Act). The point of the bill is simple: It would, if approved, require immigration enforcement officers to display clearly visible identification, while remaining unmasked, when executing their public duties.
“When federal immigration agents show up and pull someone off the street in plainclothes with their face obscured and no visible identification, it only escalates tensions and spreads fear while shielding federal agents from basic accountability,” Padilla, whose recent history is highly relevant, said in a statement. “Immigration agents should be required to display their agency and name or badge number — just like police and other local law enforcement agencies. The VISIBLE Act’s commonsense requirements will restore transparency and ensure impersonators can’t exploit the panic and confusion caused by unidentifiable federal immigration enforcement agents.”
If the president wants to say he’d veto such a bill, fine. If he wants to make a substantive case against it, great. But when asked about the legislative effort, Trump instead argued that Booker and Padilla “hate” the United States, which is offensive and insane.
In the American tradition, law enforcement personnel have always been identifiable and unmasked. The proposal from Padilla and Booker isn’t some radical reform; it’s an endorsement of routine practices that have existed in this country for generations.
For Trump to argue that it’s somehow unpatriotic to endorse an American norm offers a peek into a deeply twisted perspective.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
