On Capitol Hill last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson fielded a question on a topic he hadn’t addressed before. A reporter asked the Louisiana Republican about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials covering their faces while engaging in aggressive and legally dubious tactics.
The GOP leader dismissed the concerns as “absurd,” adding that if the officials’ faces were visible, the public might identify and target them.
It was an unpersuasive response to a good question. What the House speaker appeared to endorse was a dynamic in which ICE agents, acting at Donald Trump’s behest, can snatch people off American streets while hiding their identities. Throughout the country, all kinds of law enforcement personnel — from police officers to FBI agents to U.S. marshals — do their jobs on a day-to-day basis without hiding their faces, but in 2025, ICE agents are operating under different standards.
A variety of Democratic officials have made the case that ICE agents should stop shielding their faces. On Saturday night, Tom Homan, the administration’s “border czar,” told Fox News he’s asking the Justice Department to investigate the Democrats’ statements in order to “see if there is something we can do” — as if the comments in support of transparency might somehow have crossed legal lines.
On Sunday, the president went further, publishing a message to his social media platform that read in part, “[F]rom now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???”
In context, I’m reasonably sure he meant protesters won’t be “allowed” to wear masks, but ICE agents will.
Hours later, the Republican added, “Remember, NO MASKS!” Shortly after midnight, Trump’s newest message on the subject was even less ambiguous: “ARREST THE PEOPLE IN FACE MASKS, NOW!”
Among the many problems with this is a nagging detail: The president cannot simply make face coverings — for protesters, not members of his administration — illegal by way of an online edict. Or put another way, law enforcement personnel cannot legally “arrest the people in face masks, now,” at Trump’s say so.
With this in mind, on “Face the Nation,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a very good question: “President Trump said masks will not be allowed to be worn at protests. Who’s going to enforce? That and how? And how can you justify it when law enforcement officials have their faces covered?” Q: "Trump said that masks will not be allowed to be worn at protests. Who is going to enforce that and how?"Kristi Noem: "The law is going to be enforced…I won't get more specific on that just because we never do when it comes to law enforcement operations." After some back and forth, the South Dakota Republican ultimately replied that she was reluctant to go into specifics “because we never do when it comes to law enforcement operations.” It was hardly a reassuring response.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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