President John F. Kennedy once said that the free press in America is “the only business specifically protected by the Constitution,” but lately, it feels that the Constitution itself is no longer enough.
We say this after one of our own journalists, Dean Moses, was manhandled by two masked ICE agents at the federal immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 30.
Moses has been faithfully covering proceedings at the courthouse for months, where ICE agents have rounded up immigrants attending court-mandated hearings there. He and other photojournalists have come here because of the importance of telling the story of the ongoing immigration crackdown, the countless lives impacted, and the families torn asunder. Few people see firsthand the screams of anguish, the tears of children, and the stunning actions of ICE agents at Federal Plaza — and it’s our job to convey that to you, the reader.
The way ICE carries out its mission is something never before seen in American law enforcement — with agents wearing body armor and so much covering that you can only see their eyes in most cases. It’s our job to convey that to you as well.
By design, the way ICE agents mask up makes it impossible for anyone to identify who the arresting officers are — and while ICE insists this is a method to protect their agents from doxxing, it also seems to double as a cloak for the anonymous agents to do whatever they want to anyone they see fit to attack.
Moses witnessed this first hand on Tuesday when masked ICE agents roughly shoved and cursed at him as he went to photograph their arrest of an immigrant. Another ICE agent, also masked up, shoved another photojournalist at the scene; that caused a third photographer to fall and smack his head on the floor, knocking him unconscious for a time.
While we’re grateful Moses is fine and the more seriously injured photographer is expected to recover, we are seething at the actions of the ICE agents who went on the attack Tuesday. It was unacceptable and un-American.
ICE is here to enforce the law, not to act arbitrarily. It must act in accordance with the Constitution and respect the civil rights of every individual agents encounter, including those who are not citizens of this country.
And it must respect and honor the free press, protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and allow journalists to do their job.
We will not be pushed around and told to look the other way. We will not be bullied into leaving Federal Plaza. Moses will return there to fulfill his role of documenting ICE’s actions and informing New Yorkers about what’s happening in their courts.
We do not need ICE to roll out the welcome mat, but we do need them to respect us and the rule of law.
And since Moses and other reporters are not afraid to show their faces, the ICE agents should act in kind and take their damn masks off.
