San José City Council Supports ICE Mask Ban After Plainclothes Arrest

The San José City Council advanced a policy that would make it unlawful for federal immigration officers to conceal their identities while working in the city, moving toward enacting it as law and teeing up a potential legal showdown with the Trump administration.

In a unanimous vote on Tuesday, the council directed the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would bar all law enforcement officers, including federal agents, from “wearing any mask or personal disguise” while on duty within San José’s borders, with limited exceptions. Mayor Matt Mahan was absent.

The ordinance would also require that all law enforcement officers “wear visible identification and clear agency affiliation while interacting with the public” in the city.

The city attorney is expected to return to the council with the draft within 60 days.

“These protections are not just about procedure. They are about dignity, fairness and public trust,” District 5 Councilmember Peter Ortiz, who has spearheaded the proposal since introducing it earlier this month, said during the meeting.

The vote comes amid months of escalating immigration enforcement tactics in cities around the nation, with federal agents often making arrests while wearing plain clothing or generic uniforms with the word “police” printed on them, without clear indication of their agency affiliation.

The council’s full-throated support of the proposed policy brings San José in league with the state legislature, which passed SB 627, called the “No Secret Police Act,” from Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, earlier this month. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on Sept. 20, though he asked lawmakers to bring back follow-up legislation next year to further clarify the scope of the law.

Dozens of other governments across cities, counties and states are pushing similar laws, including in Los Angeles, New York and Pennsylvania. However, it remains unclear whether any state or local law could — or would — compel federal officers to change their tactics to comply.

“By doing this, we put ourselves on record as standing with other agencies and the state of California that are calling for federal agents to display visible identification and the prohibition of the use of face coverings unless necessary,” Ortiz said.

Even as the authority of such laws is to be determined, several council members said at the meeting, it’s important to back the proposal to address the growing distress in a city where roughly 40% of residents are foreign-born, as the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign continues.

“During a time where our families continue to live in fear, we need to do everything in our power to protect our community, not just folks who are citizens or folks who have their immigration papers,” District 8 Councilmember Domingo Candelas said.

“If you have your papers or your legal ability to be here, but you speak with an accent, you may be targeted,” he said. “We’re showing our neighbors, our community members, where we as leaders stand with what’s going on at the federal level.”

Similar to the state bill, San José’s law would include exemptions for officers for health and safety reasons, “including the use of gas masks, fire/smoke protection masks, or medical grade masks, when necessary,” according to city staff reports.

City officials and political analysts have suggested the laws are likely to end up the subject of a court fight against the Trump administration, as have many other challenges President Donald Trump has made to states’ rights and the authority of governors or mayors, such as when he sent Marines into Southern California and National Guard troops into other cities like Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C.

“So this, too, will trickle up the judicial system and at some point get some sort of clarity by the Supreme Court,” Larry Gerston, a professor emeritus of political science at San José State University, told KQED. “In the meantime, the states and local governments are fighting tooth and nail to make their case.”

Gerston said it could be tough for states and cities that are fighting to win a case on the issue of how police should identify themselves, if a case were to make it to the highest court.

“We know that the Supreme Court has been extremely generous with President Trump in terms of allowing him and, by extension, agencies such as ICE to use their powers in ways that other courts would not have allowed,” Gerston said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement earlier this month, called California’s bill “despicable,” and condemned the term secret police, which she said wrongfully likened federal agents to the Gestapo of Nazi Germany.

She said federal officers are facing “a 1000% increase” in assaults against them, and said they use masks to “protect themselves from being doxed and targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”

During the meeting on Tuesday, Ortiz invoked an incident last week at ConXión to Community, a community resource hub and day laborer center in San José’s Little Saigon neighborhood, where a man was taken out of the building by a federal immigration officer in plain clothes before being arrested, causing panic among staff and other clients of the center.

“They didn’t know who these individuals were or whether they had any authority to be there. That moment of confusion and fear illustrates exactly why this ordinance is necessary,” Ortiz said.

Misrayn Mendoza, the organizing manager for community nonprofit Amigos de Guadalupe, told the council he’s proud of the work the council is doing, but they need to step up further.

“Our people, especially our Mexican people, are getting wiped out. We need to do something,” he said, asking all council members to show their faces at protests against federal immigration enforcement. “I also hope when these creeps come to our city, I want to see every one of you shoulder to shoulder with us.”

Gerston said while the courts may have the final say on the issue, local and state elected officials passing laws around the expectations of federal law enforcement is still a valuable step, even if it has little tangible effect on the ground in the meantime.

“They’re drawing the line in the sand. ‘And maybe we can’t stop it,’ they’re saying. ‘Maybe we can’t stop it, but we can let people, whether it’s the president, the press, other states, or other cities, know that this is something too far, beyond the pale.’”