Chicago (AP) President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly asked to prohibit protests, and for demonstrators whose faces are arrested, with the recent push after demonstrations in Los Angeles about immigration attacks.
Right -wing experts informed the Associated Press that there are a variety of reasons why people may want to cover their faces during the protest, including the protection of their health, for religious reasons to avoid a retaliation of the government, prevent surveillance and doxing or to protect themselves from tear gas. With legislative measures in the United States, they say that it is only a matter of time for the problem to return to the dishes.
Demonstrators have now expressed trouble about the film material of the immigration and customs authorities who cover their faces for immigration attacks and masked officials in the protests in Los Angeles and call it a double morality.
Here are some things that you should know about the debate about face masks:
Legislative efforts aim at masked demonstrators
At least 18 states and Washington, DC, have laws that restrict masks and other facial coverings in any way, said Elly Page, a senior legal advisor to the International Center for Charge. Since October 2023, at least 16 draft laws have been introduced in eight states and the congress to limit masks for protests.
Many of these laws date from the 1940s and 50s when many states adopted anti-mask laws in response to the KU Klux Klan, whose members hid their identity and terrorized victims. In the midst of protests against the war in Gaza and the immigration policy of the Republican President, Page said that there were attempts to revive these rarely used laws in order to sometimes an inconsistent demonstrator.
Causes regarding masked ice agents
Trump’s views of arresting demonstrators for masks came when federal agents put masks as they carried out raids in Los Angeles and other US cities.
Democratic legislators have introduced laws that aim to prevent federal agents and local police officers from wearing facial masks, since ICE agents tried to hide their identity and to avoid the accountability obligation for potential misconduct in the event of top-class immigration attacks.
The topic also appeared at a hearing of the congress on June 12, when Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a democrat, criticized ice agents who wore masks during the raid and said: “Do not wear masks. Identify who they are.”
Republican federal officials claimed that masks protect agents from doxing. The deputy secretary of the Ministry of Homeland Protection Tricia McLaughlin described the California law as “detention -worthy”.
Unresolved question of the first change
Geoffrey Stone, a law professor of the University of Chicago, said that the Supreme Court of the United States had made it clear that the right to freedom of expression contains the right to speak anonymously. But he said how it should apply to demonstrators who wear masks, remains “an unsolved question of the first change”.
This raises a key question for stone: Why should demonstrators and ice agents be subject to different rules?
“The government does not want them to be targeted because they have taken on their responsibility as an ICE agent,” said Stone. “But that’s the same as the argument why they want to wear demonstrators. They want to wear masks so that they can do their” jobs “of the right freedom of speaking. The same reason for the officers who bear masks should apply to the demonstrators.”
