After Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York was denied entry to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for a photo-op visit, Nadler claimed during a press conference that the reason ICE agents are wearing masks is because of “misbehavior.”
In case you missed it, here’s Nadler earlier this week being denied entry at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City:
Rep. Jerry Nadler was denied entry to an ICE facility in New York.pic.twitter.com/tBF9Z6pnGc
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) June 19, 2025
According to New York’s Spectrum News, Nadler tried to visit with fellow New York Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman on Wednesday and was turned away; Goldman and Nadler apparently already knew they’d be turned away, but insisted that they had every right to go where they wanted to go — including an ICE detention facility.
“We received an email yesterday denying our request,” Goldman said.
“We have the absolute right to inspect any federal facility, including a detention center,” Nadler added.
However, the main controversy came when Nadler accused ICE agents of wearing masks to hide “misbehavior.”
“These people are wearing masks and are totally unidentified, and the question is, why? The question is, why?” Nadler said in a viral clip.
“It’s completely improper and, again, one has to assume they’re hiding something, or they’re hiding misbehavior, because otherwise why would they be wearing masks and denying their identity?”
Is this accurate? Well, as President Donald Trump’s Rapid Response X account noted, this isn’t just because they want to “misbehave.”
Nadler, they said in a Friday post, “accuses the brave men and women of ICE — who put themselves in harm’s way to remove dangerous illegals from our communities — of ‘hiding misbehavior’ by protecting their identities.
“ICE agents are now facing a 500% increase in assaults thanks to rhetoric like this.”
.@RepJerryNadler accuses the brave men and women of ICE—who put themselves in harm’s way to remove dangerous illegals from our communities—of “hiding misbehavior” by protecting their identities.
ICE agents are now facing a 500% increase in assaults thanks to rhetoric like this. pic.twitter.com/lnDhTLzyvA
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 20, 2025
The new statistics were reported by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday via Brietbart.
“The Department of Homeland Security released new data revealing ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500 percent increase in assaults against them while carrying out enforcement operations. Just this week, an ICE officer was dragged 50 yards by a car while arresting an illegal alien sex offender,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Every day the men and women of ICE put their lives on the line to protect and defend the lives of American citizens,” she continued.
“Make no mistake, Democrat politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, Mayor Wu of Boston, Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor Bass of Los Angeles are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE. From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi Gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is despicable. This violence against ICE must end.”
During a Friday visit to Los Angeles — where riots broke out due to ICE raids which saw televised attempts to assault agents — Vice President J.D. Vance said that Democratic politicians were “endangering” agents with their behavior, according to KNBC-TV.
“When (a) border patrol agent goes out to do their job, they said, within 15 minutes of them trying to do their job, they have protesters, sometimes violent protesters, who are in their face, obstructing them, preventing them from doing their job and endangering their lives,” Vance said.
“These people have been egged on by local officials, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass.”
Now, it is worth noting a few things. First, these data are limited, at some level, to assaults on ICE agents while they’re enforcing immigration law — something they didn’t generally do under Joe Biden’s administration and which has been a priority under the second Trump administration. Philip Bump of The Washington Post tried to fact-check this and didn’t get very far, except noting that assaults against Customs and Border Protection agents as a whole were down from the highs seen in 2022 and 2023.
However, this didn’t involve ICE enforcement operations specifically, and what did those peaks coincide with? Peaks in illegal immigration, obviously, when we routinely saw more than 200,000 encounters a month at the southern border alone.
Furthermore, you didn’t have to get that much farther into Bump’s Thursday article before you discovered the denial was just the preface to the justification:
Importantly, most of the assaults documented with indictments or news releases occurred as immigrants were being detained. One officer was elbowed in the face; two others were injured when a target’s vehicle struck their own as he was trying to escape. Considered along with the assaults that occurred at ICE facilities, you will notice a pattern: Officers hiding their identities wouldn’t have done anything to prevent the assaults from occurring.
In fact, one Justice Department assault announcement specifically noted that arresting officers were “in clearly marked ICE/Police body armor, while in front of a law enforcement vehicle with emergency lights flashing.” In other words, that the officers were clearly identifiable as such is used to reinforce that the suspect knew he was assaulting law enforcement. This is mentioned because it bolsters the government’s position.
Which is to say: If only you’d stop enforcing the law, this wouldn’t happen, and the masks have nothing to do with it.
The first part of that argument is prima facie absurd unless you’re so in the tank for illegal immigration that you believe any attempt at enforcement from ICE is bad news — in which case, there’s likely nothing that will convince you that this is a problem.
Second, as for the reasons why a mask is necessary, keep in mind that these assaults could be just the tip of the iceberg, if keyboard warriors have anything to do with it. We won’t post them here, but it takes less than a minute to find dozens of posts on X and Instagram asking users to “identify” (read: dox) ICE agents who let their masks down. Social media users don’t just dox users for fun, they dox them because they want to do something with their addresses.
Coming off murders that specifically targeted Minnesota lawmakers and several pro-Hamas terror attacks on American soil, why anyone would want to leave ICE agents exposed to this kind of doxing is beyond comprehension — unless, of course, it’s people like Rep. Nadler and Philip Bump who are the ones guilty of “misbehavior.”
Whatever the case, the facts remain the facts: Nadler’s claim doesn’t hold water absent a specific allegation of widespread wrongdoing, and the masks serve a clear purpose — one Nadler has almost certainly been made aware of one way or another.
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