A cacophony of shouts fills the air. People spill into the streets, crowding around a white car and shaking their fists angrily. A police siren pierces through the noise, serving as a verbal barrier that does little more to hold back the people than the yellow tape erected around the scene.

It was this scene that unfolded outside of Buona Forchetta—a restaurant in South Park, San Diego—on May 30, 2025. After receiving a tip that the restaurant had hired nineteen undocumented employees, the Department of Homeland Security authorized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct a raid, where four employees were ultimately detained. 

This particular raid has received considerable backlash from the local community, which has rallied behind the workers and the restaurant. Buona Forchetta decided to close for two days following the incident, declaring in a statement that they were “still processing the deep pain and confusion caused by this situation.”

The public scrutiny was directed at not just the raid itself but the nature in which it was conducted. In particular, individuals have criticized ICE agents for wearing face masks, something that San Diego council member Sean Elo-Riviera equated to a sign of “state-sponsored terrorism.” Some citizens and lawmakers have made calls for the ICE agents to be properly identified or for the masks to be removed in order to limit misunderstanding and prevent abuse of power during ICE raids.

“Every single ICE agent who’s engaged in this aggressive overreach and is trying to hide their identities from the American people will be unsuccessful in doing that,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a press briefing on Tuesday, June 3. “This is America. This is not the Soviet Union. We’re not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s.”

Others have been quick to draw similar worrying comparisons, making connections between the secret police forces used by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. After the U.S. Attorney admonished Boston, Massachusetts, Mayor Michelle Wu for characterizing ICE agents as “secret police,” Wu continued to defend her statement.

“I don't know of any police department that routinely wears masks. We know there are other groups that routinely wear masks. NSC-131 routinely wears masks,” Wu said in a statement, referring to the National Socialist Club-131, a Neo-Nazi group based in New England.

While ICE certainly operates under a different pretense than historically masked groups like NSC-131 and the Ku Klux Klan, it still raises a significant question that many politicians and policy analysts have brought to light: if ICE officers are executing the law in a legitimate and proper manner, why do they have to hide their identities?

According to Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE, the masks are merely a protection measure; he described them as a necessary component to prevent ICE officers from getting “doxed,” something that he said has happened to other officers before.

“People are out there taking photos of their names, their faces, and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves,” Lyons said at a news conference in Boston. He added, “I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, their family on the line, because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is.”

Noting that ICE officers are experiencing a 413% increase in assaults, the Department of Homeland Security also cited the importance of masks in protecting ICE officers from “sickening and demented” attacks against them.

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected gang members, murders and rapists,” the Department wrote on X.

Whether a needed component to protect ICE officers or a symptom of the return of the secret police forces that characterized the dictatorships of the mid-twentieth century, the inclusion of face masks in ICE agents’ uniforms represents a definitive shift in the role and public perception of police forces in the United States. 

As the Trump Administration moves forward with its crackdown on illegal immigration, an objective that will only continue to rely on ICE to help detain suspected undocumented immigrants, ICE is more likely to receive increasing attention among the media and public, a factor that could determine whether it is perceived in the heroic light the Trump Administration promotes or the dangerous one many lawmakers and critics have highlighted. 

Either way, the masks represent the fine line between protection and concealment, which could—and, historically, has—been a vehicle for the abuse of power. There’s only so long that the boundaries of this line can be tested before they are crossed entirely.