(American Peace Officer): In the opening scene of True Lies, when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, Harry Tasker, is wearing a tuxedo and appears ready to tango, then, as part of his choreographed escape, performs the famous Argentinian/Uruguayan dance, the Tango, it’s no surprise. Everyone in public safety, especially every first responder, dispatch ECS, or corrections officer can share a story about how their appearance, their presence, their stance, their discipline in grooming, played a role in slowing or stopping a depreciating situation. You dress for it, you prepare for it, and without surprise, it happens.
We are seeing escalating violence against all first responders nationwide but especially today on Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents and Border Patrol Officers in Minnesota. Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis Police Department has been the victim of the animosity that he has fostered, as have his officers.
In 2019, HBO reimagined the comic book/graphic novel world of Watchmen set decades in the future with Tulsa Police Officers forced to wear masks to serve in safety. This fictional scenario was set amid a powerful modern white supremacist movement while weaving in only one-sided themes of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street in 1921. It was an agenda piece, pre-George Floyd, that distorted existing storylines to project counterfactual social commentary as both today’s and tomorrow’s truths.
But here we are in 2026, with ICE agents trying to protect their families by masking while doing the fundamental duty of any functioning government; removing the convicted criminals in your country who are without legal status to be in your country.
We need to respect our own rules
The enemies of law enforcement have a solid basis opposing law enforcement without visible name badges and faces. It has been a best practice, even with a number, where a citizen with a complaint would be able to provide some identifying factor of the officer with whom they interacted. Every charging document required my name and identification number. Every affidavit, every subpoena request, even every parking, traffic ticket or abandoned vehicle notice needed to carry all my unique identifiers, both personal and agency.
The concept clearly understood was that every local, county, tribal, or state law enforcement justify using masks during search warrants when suspects and the media are present for highly specific mitigations. Wearing masks always had to be tied to serving the public interest, protecting the identities of officers and ensuring operational security during ongoing high-profile or sensitive cases. Should identities be associated with law enforcement, other collateral contacts would recognize them and either modify their operations, destroy evidence, or in the most extreme cases plot to murder those officers and their families. Masking was only for exceptional circumstances. In that, you would not see the masked officers ever handling people or taking suspects into custody.
The required presence of these masked officers on scene has always been to illuminate activities and hiding spots that couldn’t exist in the four corners of a document subject to public records laws. Equally important for the safety of the searching officers is to make sure nothing had substantively changed dangerously, like explosive traps, since the affidavit for the warrant was filed.
The big lie
The protestors are the pathetic tourists of outrage parachuting into situations they have never spent any time or effort trying to understand. They present themselves as altruistic while acting like the privileged Howells on Gillian’s Island. They are not objecting to a policy or practice they have ever studied.
Instead, they are reacting to symbols stripped of context, projecting motives onto people they do not know, in operations they cannot understand, on behalf of communities they have never cared about.
It doesn’t matter the degree of crime, the shortest line of people in the World is the line to be victimized by someone who should have been kept out of our country. Whether you are a protestor in support of illegal alien amnesty or a fervent supporter of legal immigration policy, no one can support any parent’s child being hurt, harmed, exploited, sexually assaulted or murdered by a person who was not legally allowed to be in this country. That is one of the most profound levels of failure of a federal government in its duties to protect its citizens.
Danger is lower than projected
Today ICE agents and Border Patrol officers believe that the need to mask is to protect their families from unnecessary doxxing and harassment. As a reminder, this is the reason fictional comic book superheroes give for wearing a convincing disguise or mask. ‘We’re doing it to protect our families and loved ones.’ Popular fiction follows this form.
With the surge in Minnesota, and with so many agents and officers being away from their families, I completely understand that it is a devastating and frightful scenario where some left-wing network sycophant seeks to harass, annoy, or even harm their family. I’m no risk manager, but we must evaluate this based on past harm of federal law enforcement families and project from that possible future harm. It’s been a popular movie plot and story device driving action movies, but the reality is that the bad guys have a well-founded fear of harm attacking any law enforcement family. I can’t think of any workplace friend where any ideological attacker would even have a 1% chance of survival. Perhaps popular Sheriff Grady Judd has it right when he warns criminals of a lawfully armed populace:
“If you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending that they blow you back out of their house with their guns,” said Sheriff Judd.
Masking has been ineffective
Law enforcement legitimacy collapses the moment authority hides behind masks. It survives only through visibility, accountability, and the exercise of lawful power.
Masks do not protect agents or their families. Harassment is not solved by concealment, intimidation is never curbed by retreat, and violence is not deterred by pretending anonymity equals safety. Just like Agent Ross, the lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on.
Activists may want to cosplay rebellion and manufacture oppression narratives and that is their right. But when they cross into interference, targeting, or doxxing, the answer is arrest, exposure, prosecution, and consequences without apology.
Plaid Antifa will not be defeated by hiding. It will be defeated when the law is enforced decisively and in full view of the public.
Please keep all first responders in your prayers.
This article originally appeared here.
References:
https://dailycaller.com/2026/01/15/anti-ice-protesters-random-man-chevy-video/?utm
