Politicians and members of the public are fueling efforts to expose the identities of federal agents enacting President Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.
As the Trump administration pushes lies backing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis last week, Americans are increasingly showing their opposition to the often-masked government agents deploying tactics that even Trump endorser Joe Rogan has compared to the Nazi Gestapo — albeit a bit belatedly, I’d argue.
A recent Economist/YouGov poll conducted after last week’s shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota found that 46% of Americans say ICE should be abolished, compared with 43% who say it shouldn’t. And polling data from the University of Massachusetts last summer found nearly 6 in 10 Americans oppose federal agents wearing masks to conceal their identity. Trump administration officials have claimed the masks are necessary to keep the agents safe, a claim they also have used to crack down on news outlets reporting on ICE activities.
These are the conditions that have given rise to efforts to determine who, exactly, has been given immigration enforcement authority — especially amid reports that the administration has lowered ICE’s hiring standards and increased compensation for people looking to become agents.
On Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., initiated an effort to find out whether any rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 are among the agents waging Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade today. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Raskin wrote:
We know that some participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have been rewarded with high-ranking positions in the Department of Justice (DOJ). However, it remains unclear how many more have been invited to join the ranks of this Administration, including among the masked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and officers that have dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, shot, and killed citizens and non-citizens alike in communities around the country. The letter demands a slew of documents, including a list of any DHS or DOJ employees “who have received or sought a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, or who have been charged or investigated in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack.” Neither DHS nor the DOJ immediately responded to MS NOW’s requests for comment. There also appear to be some nongovernmental efforts to reveal the identities of federal immigration officers. A website that goes by the name ICE List has claimed to have the leaked personal information of thousands of ICE and Border Patrol employees, including frontline agents. The website’s operator, who reportedly lives in the Netherlands and has American relatives, spoke with the Daily Beast for a report that was published Tuesday, and he has since told the outlet that his plans to share some of the information that was leaked were halted by a cyberattack. Nonetheless, the list, which has not been verified by MS NOW, is being spread widely on various social media platforms.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
