WASHINGTON — Masked ICE agents are the mysterious and menacing face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive.
Increasingly alarmed, Democrats are trying to conduct oversight on the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and related offices.
But Republicans care a lot less. In exclusive interviews with 10 senior senators, Raw Story found many of the most senior GOP figures on relevant committees aren’t even thinking about migrants’ rights, let alone debating the issue.
Furthermore, some of President Donald Trump’s top allies say migrants don’t have rights at all.
“I’m for ICE agents wearing anything they want to protect themselves,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol.
“Don’t American citizens deserve the right to know who's knocking on their door?” Raw Story pressed.
“No!” Tuberville replied, with a loud laugh. “Not when they're looking for illegals that's killing people.”
Never mind reports such as one from the American immigration Council that showed “immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born for each of the last 150 years,” and concluded that “immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than those who were born in the United States.”
In Trump’s Washington, studies are less important than anecdotes, talking points are more prized than facts, and rhetoric parades as reality.
Among Capitol Hill conservatives, in the midst of Trump’s rush to hunt, detain and deport entire communities, no one’s debating due process.
Rather, some Republicans are fighting to enshrine ICE agents’ legally questionable ability to permanently hide their faces, rallying around errant accusations that Democrats and the press are “doxxing” such operatives.
Even as Senate Republicans debate what to do with the House-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and the roughly $185 billion it allocates to mass deportation efforts, there’s little to no discussion about trying to exert even some of the authority the Constitution explicitly gives to Congress.
“What are your thoughts on ICE agents wearing masks here in America?” Raw Story asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the Senate Homeland Security Committee chair. “Do American citizens deserve to know who these agents are?”
“I don't have anything for you on that,” the self-described limited government libertarian dismissively replied.
Some Republicans defend ICE agents’ heavy-handed, secretive tactics. But that doesn’t mean they’re bothering to look into allegations that agents are running roughshod over the Constitution’s promise of due process for all.
“They should comply with the law — whatever that is on that — but we've got, you know, plainclothes police officers all the time,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story, while rushing to vote.
Hawley was attorney general of Missouri. He has no problem with ICE agents playing dress-up — dress-down, really — because local, state and federal law enforcement regularly work undercover.
“Sometimes they wore badges, sometimes they wouldn’t,” Hawley recalled.
‘Doxxing’ debate
Like many on the right, Hawley says his biggest concern is the safety of ICE agents, especially after the House minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) joined rank-and-file Democrats in calling for agents’ identities to be released.
“What’s outrageous is Hakeem Jeffries and others saying that we ought to doxx these agents,” said Hawley, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “That's ridiculous.”
So ridiculous, it didn’t happen.
Doxxing means publishing someone’s private information, especially their home address, without consent. Responding to a question from Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez, Jeffries called for the release of names of ICE agents, not addresses.
Jeffries was referring to agents accused of wrongfully detaining a staffer for Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), as well as agents in Newark, New Jersey who members of Congress say roughed them up last month.
Just last week, Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sued Interim New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, once Trump’s personal lawyer, for falsely arresting him at an ICE facility in May.
Jeffries says the Constitution doesn’t just protect elected officials. He says everyone on U.S. soil has a right to know the identity of badge-waving — and especially badge-hiding — accusers.
“Every single ICE agent who’s engaged in this aggressive overreach and are trying to hide their identities from the American people will be unsuccessful in doing that,” Jeffries said.
“This is America. This is not the Soviet Union. We're not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s and every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will, of course, be identified.”
But Jeffries’ words are meeting the far-right messaging machine. While he never called for agents’ addresses to be released, you wouldn’t know that from listening to top Trump officials.
In the Republican-run Capitol, meanwhile, Trump officials’ talking points are treated as gospel.
Raw Story asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, if he had “any concerns over ICE agents wearing masks and sometimes not identifying themselves?”
“Not if the reports I've heard [are right], that they get doxxed, and their families are threatened,” Grassley replied.
“We've got to make sure that people that are hired to enforce the law can do it without harm to themselves,” added Grassley, 91 and president pro tempore of the Senate, third in line for the presidency, flanked by a large security detail.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), 91, chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
“And if [masks are] what it takes, I've got no problem with it because I don't want people to be terrorized just because they're doing their job of enforcing the law.”
“It doesn't raise any due process concerns?” Raw Story pressed.
“I'll let the courts take care of that,” Grassley said.
Other Republicans want the Senate to take care of it.
Just last week, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dropped a new anti-doxxing bill. The rumored 2026 gubernatorial candidate’s new measure, the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act, makes doxxing federal agents illegal.
The fact no one has released the addresses of any ICE agents doesn’t matter, given few Republicans have even stopped to think about roving deportation squads of faceless agents knocking down doors and shattering windows.
“I hadn't thought about it,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, told Raw Story. “You want them to be safe, so if it's a safety issue, I completely understand it.”
“Don't American citizens have a right to know who's charging them?” Raw Story pressed.
“It's important for them to be clear who they are,” said Scott, a former Florida governor. “I don't know if it's important for them to know the exact person.”
‘Core concern’
Democrats are aghast.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Raw Story there was a “long history in the United States of law enforcement having identifying badges with their names so that people can know who is carrying out an arrest, from what agency.”
Facing your accuser is central to the American justice system — or, at least, it was.
“It is a core due process concern if those who are facing arrest, detention, deportation, and their families, which in many cases includes American citizens, don't know what this is, who it is,” Coons said.
Coons fears heavy-handed ICE tactics will have repercussions in migrant communities.
“Trust between law enforcement and our communities is an important part of effective law enforcement,” Coons said. “Knowing that the person who's arresting someone or detaining someone is duly authorized is a key part of a system of order.”
It’s about more than masks. Coons argues checks and balances built into America’s legal system are being erased in real-time.
“Due process requires transparency, traceability and following court orders — all of those have been somewhat in play in recent months,” Coons said. “It's important that they be followed.”
Nonetheless, masked agents are central to the deportation debate.
After recent ICE raids across Virginia, its two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, addressed what they called an “alarming and dangerous turn.”
On May 23, in a fiery three-page letter documenting ICE-related unrest nationwide, the two former governors lectured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Deportation Czar Tom Homan and two ICE directors about the “unintended consequences” of secretive tactics.
“Such actions put everyone at risk – the targeted individuals, the ICE officers and agents, and bystanders who may misunderstand what is happening and may attempt to intervene,” Warner and Kaine wrote.
“We urge you to direct ICE officers and agents to promptly and clearly identify themselves as law enforcement officers conducting law enforcement actions when arresting subjects, and limit the use of face coverings during arrests and other enforcement.”
‘The fear’
Before Trump swept back into the White House, American policing had been bending slowly towards transparency, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former state attorney general.
Whilemanypolice forces and unions initially resisted body cameras, they’ve now become the norm in major cities.
“Even body cams are there to show the public that in fact [officers] behaved well,” Whitehouse said. “So I think that's the message [of ICE agents masking and operating without badges.] They intend to create a sort of image of creepiness and unaccountability, because that helps with the fear that they're trying to inculcate.”
That’s why Whitehouse and most other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are vehemently opposed to officers wearing masks.
“It's not consistent with the best traditions of American law enforcement,” Whitehouse told Raw Story. “It conjures unpleasant images. It runs contrary to the transparency that we customarily worked on, where people's name and badge number has to be visible.”