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CHICAGO -- President Donald Trump and his allies person repeatedly called for mask-wearing astatine protests to beryllium banned and for protesters whose faces are covered to beryllium arrested, with the astir caller propulsion pursuing demonstrations successful Los Angeles implicit migration raids.
Legal experts told The Associated Press determination are a assortment of reasons radical whitethorn privation to screen their faces portion protesting, including to support their health, for spiritual reasons, to debar authorities retaliation, to forestall surveillance and doxing, oregon to support themselves from teardrop gas. With legislative enactment happening crossed the U.S., they accidental it's lone a substance of clip earlier the contented returns to the courts.
Protesters, meanwhile, person voiced choler implicit footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents covering their faces astatine migration raids and masked officers astatine the Los Angeles protests, calling it a treble standard.
Here are immoderate things to cognize astir the statement implicit look masks:
At slightest 18 states and Washington, D.C., person laws that restrict masks and different look coverings successful immoderate way, said Elly Page, elder ineligible advisor with the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law. Since October 2023, astatine slightest 16 bills person been introduced successful 8 states and Congress to restrict masks astatine protests, according to the center.
Many of these laws day backmost to the 1940s and ’50s erstwhile galore states passed anti-mask laws arsenic a effect to the Ku Klux Klan, whose members hid their identities portion terrorizing victims. Amid protests against the warfare successful Gaza and the Republican president’s migration policies, Page said determination person been attempts to revive these seldom utilized laws to people protesters, sometimes inconsistently.
Trump’s calls to apprehension protesters for wearing masks came arsenic national agents were seen donning masks portion conducting raids successful Los Angeles and different U.S. cities.
Democratic lawmakers successful California person introduced legislation aiming to halt national agents and section constabulary officers from wearing look masks amid concerns that ICE agents were attempting to fell their identities and debar accountability for imaginable misconduct during high-profile migration raids.
The contented besides came up astatine a legislature proceeding connected June 12, erstwhile Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, criticized ICE agents wearing masks during raids, saying: “Don’t deterioration masks. Identify who you are.”
Republican national officials person maintained that masks support agents from doxing. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the California measure “despicable."
Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago instrumentality professor, said the U.S. Supreme Court has made wide that the close to escaped code includes the close to talk retired anonymously. But helium said however it should use to protesters wearing masks remains “an unresolved First Amendment question.”
For Stone, that raises a cardinal question: Why should protesters and ICE agents beryllium taxable to antithetic rules?
“The authorities doesn’t privation them to beryllium targeted due to the fact that they engaged successful their responsibilities arsenic ICE agents,” Stone said. “But that’s the aforesaid happening arsenic the statement arsenic to wherefore you privation demonstrators to deterioration masks. They privation to deterioration masks truthful they tin bash their ‘jobs’ of engaging successful escaped code properly. The aforesaid rationale for the officers wearing masks should use to the protesters.”
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