Over the weekend, University of Alabama School of Law professor Joyce Vance suggested Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents wearing masks could face "lawful" violence during raids as a result of people mistaking a raid for a "kidnapping."
Vance, an MSNBC contributor, was asked on Saturday's "Velshi" as a prosecutor about ICE agents wearing masks during a raid. She described the notion that wearing a mask was for law enforcement's protection as "utterly ludicrous."
"There are very serious legal restrictions around the use of, for instance, FBI agents as undercover operatives," Vance declared. "Very strict rules regarding how it's done, what they can do, what they can't do. But you know what I've never seen a federal agent working a case do is pull a mask up so nobody knows who they are and go out and terrorize a civilian population."
She continued, "And I think it's important for us at this point to be very plain-speaking when we say that this is not normal, it's not acceptable and it's a danger sign. You know, we are well past the point where we can just identify danger signs and say, 'Oh, there might be problems down the road.' The problems are here, they're in the right now. And as we see people being pulled off the streets — you know, the danger to law enforcement, quite frankly, is that when you're masked like that and people don't know who you are, someone might exercise their lawful right of self-defense to protect themselves, thinking they're being kidnapped."
"So the notion that this is for law enforcement's protection is utterly ludicrous. And we need to do away with that," Vance concluded.
(h/t Newsbusters)
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