What to know about debate over protesters and ICE agents wearing masks amid immigration crackdowns

CHICAGO (AP) — President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly called for mask-wearing at protests to be banned and for protesters whose faces are covered to be arrested, with the most recent push following demonstrations in Los Angeles over immigration raids.

Legal experts told The Associated Press there are a variety of reasons people may want to cover their faces while protesting, including to protect their health, for religious reasons, to avoid government retaliation, to prevent surveillance and doxing, or to protect themselves from tear gas. With legislative action happening across the U.S., they say it’s only a matter of time before the issue returns to the courts.

Protesters, meanwhile, have voiced anger over footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents covering their faces at immigration raids and masked officers at the Los Angeles protests, calling it a double standard.

Here are some things to know about the debate over face masks:

Legislative efforts target masked protesters

At least 18 states and Washington, D.C., have laws that restrict masks and other face coverings in some way, said Elly Page, senior legal adviser with the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law. Since October 2023, at least 16 bills have been introduced in eight states and Congress to restrict masks at protests, according to the center.

Many of these laws date back to the 1940s and ’50s when many states passed anti-mask laws as a response to the Ku Klux Klan, whose members hid their identities while terrorizing victims. Amid protests against the war in Gaza and the Republican president’s immigration policies, Page said there have been attempts to revive these rarely used laws to target protesters, sometimes inconsistently.

Concerns over masked ICE agents

Trump’s calls to arrest protesters for wearing masks came as federal agents were seen donning masks while conducting raids in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.

Democratic lawmakers in California have introduced legislation aiming to stop federal agents and local police officers from wearing face masks amid concerns that ICE agents were attempting to hide their identities and avoid accountability for potential misconduct during high-profile immigration raids.

The issue also came up at a congressional hearing on June 12, when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, criticized ICE agents wearing masks during raids, saying: “Don’t wear masks. Identify who you are.”

Republican federal officials have maintained that masks protect agents from doxing. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the California bill “despicable.”

Unresolved First Amendment question

Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, said the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that the right to free speech includes the right to speak out anonymously. But he said how it should apply to protesters wearing masks remains “an unresolved First Amendment question.”

For Stone, that raises a key question: Why should protesters and ICE agents be subject to different rules?

“The government doesn’t want them to be targeted because they engaged in their responsibilities as ICE agents,” Stone said. “But that’s the same thing as the argument as to why you want demonstrators to wear masks. They want to wear masks so they can do their ‘jobs’ of engaging in free speech properly. The same rationale for the officers wearing masks should apply to the protesters.”