In a stunning and unflinching decision, a Reagan-appointed federal judge has delivered a scorching takedown of Donald Trump’s immigration tactics—drawing an explosive comparison between masked ICE agents and the Ku Klux Klan.
On Tuesday, Judge Bill Young of Massachusetts issued a 161-page ruling that ripped into the Trump administration’s treatment of noncitizen students who had protested Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Young’s opinion wasn’t just a dry legal analysis—it was a full-blown condemnation of the administration’s abuse of power, laced with moral outrage and historical parallels that hit like a hammer.
Young rebuked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for targeting individuals like Rümeysa Öztürk, a student who was arrested by masked agents in what the judge described as a deliberate campaign of intimidation. The government’s defense? The agents wear masks for their own protection.
Young was having none of it.
“This Court has listened carefully to the reasons given by [Rümeysa] Öztürk’s captors for masking-up and has heard the same reasons advanced by the defendant Todd Lyons, Acting Director of ICE,” he wrote. “It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable.”
Then came the bombshell:
“ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor — and honor still matters.”
And if that wasn’t clear enough, Young laid down a devastating comparison that few judges would ever dare to make: “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.”
This wasn’t rhetoric. It was a rare moment of judicial thunder — a conservative judge calling out a conservative president’s administration for adopting tactics that undermine the very foundation of American values. He capped off the section with a haunting quote from Abraham Lincoln: “We can not escape history … [It] will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”
The rebuke lands at a time when the role and conduct of law enforcement—especially in the context of immigration—remain under fierce public scrutiny. While ICE and its defenders argue that masks protect officers from retaliation, critics say it’s a chilling echo of authoritarian regimes. Young’s decision just gave that criticism judicial weight.
And he’s not alone. Retired police chief and current Brown University professor Brandon del Pozo offered a powerful counterpoint to the idea that officers need to hide their identities:
“I never for a second thought of hiding my face from the public, hiding my face from the people I policed. Nor did any cop that I knew and worked with. And we were proud that we had the courage to do our jobs that way.”
It’s not every day a federal judge—especially one appointed by Ronald Reagan—calls out ICE’s tactics as fundamentally un-American. But in Judge Young’s opinion, intimidation in the shadows is not law enforcement. It’s terror. And it’s cowardice.
