LISA DESJARDINS: You may have seen pictures in recent months of ICE agents making immigration arrests in public spaces, some wearing street clothes, using unmarked cars and covering their faces with masks.
But there's a related headline, a handful of arrests of people posing as ICE officers, in some cases carrying out assaults and robberies and even fake traffic stops.
To talk about ICE and its imposters, I'm joined by Jose Olivares, a freelance investigative journalist who's been covering this trend for the Guardian newspaper.
Jose, you found or were able to document around half a dozen of these cases.
That may be a pattern, but it's not a huge number.
Why do you still think this is significant to watch?
JOSE OLIVARES, Investigative Journalist: It's not necessarily a new trend.
Right.
We've seen examples in the past of people pretending to be police officers and impersonating people.
But I think the recent escalation by immigration officials throughout the country under the Trump administration has opened this door for criminals to take advantage and to prey on vulnerable immigrant communities that are afraid of these immigration enforcement actions.
Right.
And I think experts are very worried that this rising trend of immigration officers wearing masks to conduct these arrests ends up blurring the line between who is actually an officer and who is a civilian who might be, you know, taking advantage and capitalizing on this trend.
LISA DESJARDINS: In these known cases, what about the why?
Are these ever vigilantes trying to go after people they think they should, or are these criminals, as you say?
JOSE OLIVARES: I think we've seen certain rumblings of vigilante groups going after people who are undocumented.
But a lot of the cases that we've seen within the past year, within the past few months under the Trump administration, have been examples of people pretending to be ICE officers.
Someone, North Carolina, for example, sexually assaulting someone who was vulnerable by pretending to be an ICE officer.
Or we've seen examples of people pretending to be ICE officers and robbing people by flashing a badge, or even, in one case, kidnapping a person.
And so it's not necessarily that they're working in tandem or pretending to be or acting like vigilantes working to arrest immigration - - immigrants throughout the country.
It's more so a question of these opportunists and these criminals taking advantage of this very delicate and vulnerable time in history to conduct these crimes throughout the country.
LISA DESJARDINS: Why is it that more and more of these agents are using masks?
And if someone is on the other end or sees someone who has identified themselves as an ICE agent, what can they do to find out and verify that it is, in fact, an ICE agent?
JOSE OLIVARES: As federal officers, there's no law, there's no regulation that bans or prohibits federal officers to wear masks.
In fact, it's actually the opposite.
Right.
The Department of Homeland Security says that it's -- so that these officers can protect themselves from people who might be doxing them or identifying them and potentially threatening them or assaulting them.
But I think in a lot of cases, what we have to understand is that ICE as an agency is not a popular agency right now.
It's committing a lot of actions that people see you as, you know, trampling on human rights, trampling on judicial due process rights.
And so a lot of these officers that we're seeing is, we're seeing more and more officers wear masks when they're conducting operations precisely because the agency is very unpopular.
But a lot of people, they point to this and say, you know, this opens the door so that there is less accountability for officers when they're conducting these types of operations.
There are less transparency, and it erodes a certain trust between people and law enforcement agencies.
Right.
When ICE officers conduct large scale operations, they have to wear a certain badge that identifies them.
Right.
But that badge, you know, there's no regulation saying how big the display has to be.
Right.
It could just be a tiny badge on their shirt or on their belt and that might be enough.
Right.
And so it's difficult.
And what we're seeing is we're seeing certain lawmakers push for legislation, introduce different bills to Congress, not just at the federal level, but also at the local and state level that would require immigration officers to identify themselves when conducting certain immigration arrests.
LISA DESJARDINS: All right.
Jose Olivares, thank you so much for your reporting.
JOSE OLIVARES: Thank you, Lisa.