(AP Photo / Eric Gay) A man who identified himself as a doctor from Cuba is detained and escorted to a bus by federal agents following an appearance at immigration court, Monday, June 23, 2025, in San Antonio.
Opinion>Immigration
Behind the mask: What are ICE agents hiding?
by Matt K. Lewis, opinion contributor – 06/25/25 9:00 AM ET
“Who was that masked man?
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember that line from “The Lone Ranger” — a weekly morality play, first broadcast on the radio in the 1930s, in which the hero wore a mask to hide not from accountability, but from accolades (and from the outlaw gang that ambushed him and left him for dead).
In that depiction, justice rode in on a white horse and rode off into the sunset. It was dispensed honorably — if anonymously — and always in defense of the vulnerable.
Fast-forward to 2025, and we’re contending with a different kind of masked man. These cowboys don’t ride stallions or fire warning shots into the air. They roll up in unmarked SUVs, dressed in tactical vests and with their faces covered. In one viral video, such men appear to pummel a landscaper outside an IHOP in Santa Ana, Calif., where he worked. The man’s three sons, as it happens, are all U.S. Marines.
This isn’t just excessive force or profiling. It’s the perversion of the very idea of public safety — one that creates deeper, more insidious problems.
The first is psychological and moral. The old proverb warns: The mask becomes the face. Anyone who’s spent time online knows that anonymity often brings out the worst in us. But this isn’t just about a loss of civility.
