Faceless Feds at War With America
Why law enforcement are suddenly blurring their own faces in press releases
When federal authorities arrested Wisconsin circuit court judge Hannah Dugan this week, they publicized photos of police escorting her into an unmarked vehicle, their faces blurred out so they couldn’t be identified.
Since Donald Trump came into office, the federal government is now routinely blurring out law enforcement’s faces in its frenzy of triumphant social media postings and press releases containing photos of arrests and immigration actions in particular. They tell me it’s for operational security. But I see something different: an army of nameless, faceless goons whose anonymity reveals their alienation from the American public they’re supposed to serve.
Presumably the White House thinks these G-men photo ops are good publicity for its immigration agenda; they instead smack of the exact politicization of the FBI and other agencies that Trump railed against during the election. Swarms of faceless immigration police are raiding workplaces, night clubs and other venues, carrying out arrests with the zeal of a cop manning a speed trap on the highway — and often with a photographer nearby.
“No one is above the law,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X containing the photo of Dugan’s arrest.
But are they above transparency? The question appears in countless replies to virtually all of these triumphalist social media posts, with angry users demanding to know the reason for the lack of transparency — a question the news media hasn’t bothered to ask, as far as I can tell.
So I put the question to both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The FBI did not respond, but homeland security, the largest federal law enforcement organization in the country, did. A DHS spokesperson attributed the blurring of officers’ faces to an increase in “threats, assaults and doxing events,” pointing to the case of a “lunatic” accused of threatening the life of homeland secretary Kristi Noem (of purse-losing fame).
Here’s the spokesperson’s full statement to me in an email:
“DHS’ heroic law enforcement personnel are working tirelessly to restore the rule of law in this country, and doing so has exposed them to an increase in threats, assaults, and doxing events. ICE officers right now face a 300% increase in assaults during enforcement actions. Federal law enforcement, including HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] Dallas, recently arrested a violent lunatic named Robert King for making threats against DHS officers and Sec. Noem. DHS will take all necessary precautions to protect our employees while they carry out this critical mission. In some cases, that means blurring some officers’ faces in social media posts.”
When I read the email, I immediately recognized Robert King from a ridiculous arrest photo HSI had posted on social media. The photo depicted a sullen looking young man with cuffs around his hands and ankles flanked by five law enforcement officers with their faces all blurred out — as if they had captured El Chapo.
“Robert King, a U.S. citizen was recently taken into custody in McKinney, Texas for making terroristic threats against ICE agents and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem,” HSI’s April 2 post said. “King’s alarming social media posts included intentions to "open fire” if agents are seen in his neighborhood.”
When I saw the post, I remember rolling my eyes at how melodramatic I thought the feds were being about what seemed to me like some sad keyboard warrior just acting like a tough guy online. A Justice Department press release several days later flagged the following two social media posts allegedly authored by King:
“If I see ICE agents in my neighborhood I’m opening fire. It’s time to stop being p[redacted] and put the second amendment to work. ICE are not real cops, they are a secret police force with no real legal authority. Kill them.”
“Just wanna double down on what I said the other day: if ICE comes to your neighborhod, fucking shoot them and kill them. No mercy for the Gestapo.”
While the posts clearly call for violence, neither post references any specific ICE agent. The criminal complaint paints a pretty sad picture, saying King “had nowhere to live” and “was presumably living out of his vehicle.”
The federal complaint filed in court describes several other social media posts which portray a pretty ordinary liberal Democrat (aside from the violent rhetoric). An Instagram post refers to the “GOP” with the USSR’s Hammer and Sickle forming the “O”; another post is a meme he shared from “The Other 98%” alongside a photo of Vice President JD Vance and his wife alongside text:
“JD and his wife had to stay at a US Base in Northern Greenland because no one else in the country was willing to host them. That’s how much Greenland wants to be a part of the United States.”
Aside from King’s alleged caption (“They should have done us all a favor and blown them the fuck up”), these are the same cringey memes shared by countless Facebook grandmas every day! Far from a Weather Underground-style radical the federal government is imagining, King is much closer to Rachel Maddow.
The criminal complaint also includes a screenshot of King’s alleged threat to Noem, a caption he added while sharing an article by PBS NewsHour about Noem’s visit to El Salvador’s high-security prison, CECOT, where the Trump administration is warehousing alleged gang members. King’s caption reads:
“I truly hope, and I mean this with all my heart, that Kristi Noem meets a horrible and agonizing demise. I hope she is tried in a war criminal court with the rest of the Nazis when this is all over and I hope he is ripped apart in a gulag. Nothing less for Nazi scum. This is America now. A Nazi fascist state. Disgusting.”
All of this precipitated by some homeless PBS NewsHour fan’s post expressing his “hope” that Kristi Noem is tried and executed by a “war criminal court” (whatever that means).
The King case is not even the most absurd. Other arrest photos posted to social media by federal law enforcement portray even the backs of officer’s heads blurred.
If this is the 300 percent increase in threats that homeland security is referring to, then it’s pretty thin justification. The administration is behaving as though they’re at war with some kind of ruthless domestic insurgency. White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka employs rhetoric suggesting he actually believes that’s what this is. Left unchallenged, the result will be a 21st century COINTELPRO against the domestic opponents of the Trump administration, the boys in blue recast as the boys in brown.
The above photos capture everything that’s wrong with our current domestic security state: needless secrecy arising from the paranoid belief in unseen threats, justified by a bone-deep conviction that all of this is for the greater good, to uphold the rule of law.
This is a war on the American people, whether national security officialdom realizes it or not.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
And at the same time campuses are prohibiting masks worn people who protest the Israeli genocide. Ok for ICE as they kidnapped a Turkish Tufts student off the street for writing an OpEd against Israel in her college publication!
These photos remind of those of a proud poacher of some innocent rare animal in remote Africa. What's with the photos? Are we suppose to be proud of these officers and their catch? Scared? All I feel is shame for the lack of their humanity.