When Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested in Somerville, Mass. and detained on Tuesday, there was an immediate outcry over what supporters see as government retaliation for her political views of the war in Gaza.
But many people also focused on what online videos of her arrest revealed: law enforcement agents wearing masks.
In the videos that captured the moment, Ozturk, 30, is seen being surrounded by three men and three women wearing street clothes. Most of them are also masked. One man's face is visible at first, then when he looks up toward the camera, he pulls a neck gaiter up over his nose like his colleagues.
The person taking one of the videos can be heard shouting to them, "You want to take those masks off? Is this a kidnapping? Can I see some faces here? How do I know this is the police?"
The man asked NPR to withhold his name for fear of repercussions for criticizing ICE. He says he assumed he was watching a government operation, but he still regarded it as the moral equivalent of a kidnapping.
"It's clear that you cover your face when you're doing immoral actions," he says.
Public concern over masked law enforcement has been growing in the years since the pandemic, which first opened up a medical exception to department rules requiring officers to keep their faces visible. Even as Covid-19 waned, some officers kept the gaiters as an optional face covering, especially when confronted by members of the public recording video.
Special units such as tactical teams and undercover investigators are also often allowed to use masks in certain situations.
For federal law enforcement, there appears to be more freedom to wear masks. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn't respond to NPR's question about mask rules, but the publicly-available versions of ICE policies do not appear to ban masks.
Recently-retired ICE agents tell NPR that they can't recall being told not to wear masks, and that the decision to wear them is usually left to the discretion of an operation commander.
Since the start of President Trump's second term and the push for mass deportations, ICE has also borrowed agents and officers from other federal agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations. Federal agents who usually do more sensitive or undercover work may have professional reasons to conceal their faces while doing these high-profile immigration arrests.
But when caught on video, the masks strike many people as ominous. A written statement by Mahsa Khanbabai, a lawyer for Ozturk, stresses that the arresting agents were masked, and that "[n]othing in this video indicates that these are law enforcement agents and from which agency. This video should shake everyone to their core."
Some agents in the video do appear to have badges around their necks, but the car they lead Ozturk toward is unmarked.
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