By Ray Sanchez and Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — When New York City Comptroller Brad Lander returned to a Manhattan immigration courthouse on Friday, days after being arrested while escorting an immigrant whom federal agents detained, he said he again witnessed “a deeply dehumanizing process.”

“We saw three people removed by the same non-uniformed, masked ICE agents who gave no reason for their removal, ripped them out of the arms of escorts in a proceeding that bears no resemblance to justice,” said Lander, who is running for mayor, according to CNN affiliate WCBS-TV.

It has become the new calling card of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown: Federal officers, often masked and not wearing uniforms or displaying badges, arresting people outside courtroom hearings, during traffic stops and in workplace sweeps.

“I never saw anyone wearing a mask,” John Sandweg, an acting director of Immigration Customs and Enforcement under President Barack Obama and a former acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, said of the dozens of ride-alongs he attended during his tenure.

“When you’re at ICE and you’re at DHS, the first and highest priority is the safety of the workforce, and you have to do what’s necessary to protect them, but I think there’s no doubt it’s gone past what any reasonable policy would allow, and it really has to be a situation where it’s the exception, not the rule.”

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has said federal officers are covering up to protect their families after some have been publicly identified and then harassed online, along with relatives.

“I am 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, and their family on the line, because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” Lyons said.

Sandweg believes the wearing of masks by agents started around March. That’s when federal immigration officers in plainclothes and without visible identification began detaining international students on campuses or near their homes as part of the Trump administration campaign targeting pro-Palestinian student activists and critics of Israel’s policies.

“The way that they’re carrying on without any visible identification – even that they’re law enforcement, much less what agency they’re with – it really is pretty unprecedented to see at this scale, and I think it’s very dangerous,” said Scott Shuchart, a senior ICE official during the Biden administration.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the practice of officers using neck gaiters, balaclavas and surgical masks during high-profile enforcement actions, or instances of agents not revealing what agency they’re with or not displaying credentials or badges.

‘Setting ourselves up for a kind of vigilante problem’

There is no federal policy dictating when officers can or should cover their faces during arrests. Historically, officers have almost always concealed their faces only while performing undercover work to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations, law enforcement experts have told CNN.

The experts acknowledge the need to protect agents from future retribution in a climate where technology and social media has made it easier to access and expose officers’ personal information. While the doxxing threat is real, they said, many of the controversial enforcement actions have been conducted in places such as residences and courthouses.

And critics are quick to point out the irony of the Trump administration demanding bans on masks during protests on college campuses and other locations while allowing immigration officers to wear them to detain immigrants.

A week ago, after immigration raids sparked sometimes violent protests and the deployment of US troops in Los Angeles, President Donald Trump vowed to ban the use of masks by demonstrators.

“MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???” the president posted on Truth Social.

On Friday, the New York City Bar Association said it “views with alarm” the new practice of immigration officers “wearing masks and otherwise obscuring their identities.” The tactic, it said, “appears to be an effort to evade accountability, and to decrease transparency in response to increasing allegations of government overreach, abuse of power, and violations of constitutional rights.”

The practice also makes it “nearly impossible to distinguish the conduct of an imposter from that of an authorized agent,” the bar association said in a statement, citing the recent shootings of Minnesota state legislators and their spouses — two fatally — by a suspect masquerading as a police officer.

“There are a lot of guns in this country,” Shuchart said. “I don’t know how we aren’t setting ourselves up for a kind of vigilante problem where people either don’t know, or at least aren’t sure, that these officers who are dressed up like bank robbers are actually law enforcement officers.”

Officers ‘caught in a constant pendulum’

In California on Monday, a pair of state legislators proposed a bill making it a misdemeanor for local, state, and federal law enforcement officers to cover their faces while conducting operations in the state. The bill, if approved, would require all law enforcement officers to show their faces and be identifiable by their uniform.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco, and state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, a Democrat representing Berkeley and Oakland, said the proposal aims to boost transparency and public trust in law enforcement in the face of what they called the Trump administration’s “use of secret police tactics.”

US Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, speaking at the House Oversight Committee hearing on June 12 where Democratic elected officials were grilled about immigration policies in their states, likened the actions of masked and un-uniformed immigration officers to the Gestapo, the political police of Nazi Germany.

“When you compare the old films of the Gestapo grabbing people off the streets of Poland, and you compare them to those nondescript thugs… it does look like a Gestapo operation,” said Lynch, according to video from C-Span.

Since Trump took office, ICE – which had previously been operating with a set of guidelines focused on public safety and national security threats – has become the agency at the core of the president’s campaign promise to carry out mass deportations, CNN has reported.

Publicly, the administration has touted its immigration crackdown. Privately, however, officials have come under fire for failing to meet White House arrest quotas, according to multiple sources.

Some ICE officers welcomed the greater latitude because it allowed them to have more discretion on who they arrest. But the agents have continued to come under pressure from senior Trump officials to arrest more people, including those with no criminal records.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies, communicated that urgency in a May meeting with senior ICE officials, urging that agents search anywhere and everywhere for undocumented immigrants, according to multiple sources.

“I will tell you, if these agents had their druthers, the majority of them, especially the (Homeland Security Investigations) ones, they wouldn’t be doing this work at all,” Sandweg said.

“They’d be focused on criminal investigations, working the stuff they’ve always done, working wiretaps to apprehend ‘Chapo’ Guzman in Mexico, not grabbing migrants, you know, day laborers at Home Depot parking lots.”

Internal government documents obtained by CNN show that only a fraction of migrants booked into ICE custody since October have been convicted of serious violent or sexual crimes.

More than 75% of people booked into ICE custody in fiscal year 2025 had no criminal conviction other than an immigration or traffic-related offense, according to ICE records from October through the end of May. And less than 10% were convicted of serious crimes like murder, assault, robbery or rape.

“Immigration enforcement officers at ICE are caught in a constant pendulum,” said Kevin Landy, a former ICE official during the Obama administration. “Under liberal administrations, they’ve been told to concentrate on priority cases like criminals and avoid all other arrests. Then the Republicans take over, and suddenly they’re swinging in the opposite direction. They’re being harangued to meet impossible daily quotas and arrest everybody.”

Referring to the more aggressive enforcement tactics, including the use of masks, Landy added: “It creates this feeling that we’re living in a lawless country. Soldiers and police in some other countries wear masks either to avoid accountability for their actions or because they’re afraid of retaliation from criminal organizations.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Lander, the New York City comptroller, was released from federal custody, hours after he was arrested by officers at immigration court in Manhattan while escorting an immigrant whom officers detained. On Friday morning, the mayoral candidate returned to the downtown courthouse, along with state Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Democrat, WCBS-TV reported.

Ramos’ team took video of a couple being separated, the station reported. The woman’s husband was detained by a strapping immigration agent wearing a baseball cap and a mask. His pregnant wife, whose immigration case is still pending, cried as he was taken away.

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CNN’s Emma Tucker, Priscilla Alvarez, Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, Majilie de Puy Kamp, Yahya Abou-Ghazala and Gloria Pazmino contributed to this report.