WIRED: FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves 

The FBI says ICE’s “enhanced public profile,” and the media coverage around it, offers criminals the perfect pretext to prey on vulnerable communities. Legal experts say that images of militarized, masked enforcement are not just being copied by criminals but encouraged by policy itself. Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the civil-liberties nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, says the current administration’s actions have worsened the problem, weakening public confidence and inviting impersonators to borrow its authority. 

“The Department of Homeland Security’s supposed campaign against only the ‘worst of the worst’ while upstanding community members are detained or deported and people are targeted for First Amendment-protected activities undermines legitimacy. Wearing masks and snatching people off the street undermines legitimacy,” Scott says. “It creates the expectation of federal officers that will aggressively treat anyone as a target and, as a result, creates the conditions for impersonators to leverage this expectation to commit crimes.” 

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