During a recent appearance on MSNBC’s “Velshi,” MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance, also a law professor at the University of Alabama, argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents wearing masks during immigration enforcement could face “lawful” violence.
Vance said ICE agents could be mistaken for those committing “kidnapping.”
“Joyce, let me ask you one thing,” host Ali Velshi said. “You’re a prosecutor, I want to ask you, there are legitimate reasons why some enforcement agencies, some police agencies, go undercover or, you know, do things in shadows to achieve certain things. I would assume that’s specific and, you, know, it needs to be, needs to comport with some laws.”
Vance replied, “Exactly. There are very serious legal restrictions around the use of, for instance, FBI agents as undercover operatives — very strict rules regarding how it’s done, what they can do, what they can’t do. But you know what I’ve never seen a federal agent working a case due is pull a mask up so nobody knows who they are and go out and terrorize a civilian population. And I think it’s important for us at this point to be very plain-speaking when we say that this is not normal, it’s not acceptable, and it’s a danger sign. You know, we are well past the point where we can just identify danger signs and say, oh, there might be problems down the road. The problems are here, they’re in the right now.”
“And as we see people being pulled off the streets — you know, the danger to law enforcement, quite frankly, is that when you’re masked like that and people don’t know who you are, someone might exercise their lawful right of self-defense to protect themselves, thinking they’re being kidnapped,” she added. “So the notion that this is for law enforcement’s protection is utterly ludicrous. And we need to do away with that.”
(h/t Newsbusters)
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