{"id":980504,"date":"2026-08-04T17:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/980504\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T17:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T17:25:13","slug":"federal-judge-blocks-new-york-state-law-banning-ice-agents-from-wearing-masks-in-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/980504\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge blocks New York state law banning ICE agents from wearing masks in state"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has blocked<\/a> a New York law banning<\/a> Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from wearing masks while on duty in the state, saying the law is likely an impermissible regulation of federal activity.<\/p>\n

The decision comes after the federal government sued to stop<\/a> the New York law, which went into effect in late June and was intended to prevent ICE agents from conducting masked kidnappings of people across the state. Elected officials who passed the law argued officers were emboldened to pick people up with little to no justification because they were hiding their faces, and in court, attorneys argued the state was allowed to pass the law because it\u2019s within New York\u2019s \u201cpolice powers\u201d to pass laws that are within the state\u2019s best interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Mae D\u2019Agostino, an Obama appointee, said it was \u201cbesides the point\u201d that preventing federal officers from wearing masks in New York is within the state\u2019s jurisdiction and would prevent dangerous situations because the state can\u2019t tell the federal government how to do its job, the upstate judge wrote late Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court has clearly held that the United States may perform its functions without conforming to the police regulations of a state,\u201d D\u2019Agostino wrote. \u201cAlthough the Federal Government is limited in the number of its powers, states cannot exclude it from the exercise of any authority conferred upon it by the Constitution [or] obstruct its authorized officers against its will.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal government is allowed to do what it needs to carry out its \u201cnecessary functions\u201d (here, immigration enforcement via the longstanding Immigration and Nationality Act<\/a>) without obstruction from the states, D\u2019Agostino wrote in her 51-page decision.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That means that because the federal government has decided ICE officers need to wear masks to carry out the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, the judge said that New York cannot do anything about it: \u201cSettled law establishes that federal, not state, authorities make the policies that animate the enforcement of federal immigration laws,\u201d and the feds say they need masks.<\/p>\n

\u201cStates have no power \u2026 to impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the general government,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cThe intergovernmental immunity doctrine \u2018generally immunizes the Federal Government from state laws that either (1) \u2018directly regulate\u2019 or (2) \u2018discriminate against it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal Department of Justice commended D\u2019Agostino\u2019s decision and said the department is \u201cfocused on law and order, public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is defending the state law in the case, said her office stands \u201cfirm in our belief that masked agents do not make New York safer.\u201d She said her team is reviewing \u201call legal options\u201d to enforce the mask ban against ICE agents.<\/p>\n

Similar laws banning ICE agents from wearing masks have not fared well across the country. Previously, a federal California district court judge ruled the law was unconstitutional because it exempted state police, and a local judge in Philadelphia blocked a city law also attempting to unmask ICE agents.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s decision in New York is a preliminary one in a case brought by the federal government against a package of laws the state passed in an attempt to stymie ICE picking people up with little or no justification and taking them to reportedly horrific detention centers<\/a>, such as New Jersey\u2019s Delaney Hall, where someone died this weekend<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The federal government had also asked D\u2019Agostino to also block local laws preventing city and state police from working with or taking orders from ICE and barring local agencies, governments and facilities, like jails and schools, from engaging in contracts with ICE. The judge declined to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said those laws were likely permissible because a state\u2019s choice not to voluntarily cooperate with immigration enforcement does not prevent the federal government from doing it itself. Unlike the mask ban, these laws do not stop the feds from doing what they say they need to and can do themselves, so they don\u2019t run afoul of the federal government\u2019s immunity from state law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile [these] agreements may facilitate the federal government\u2019s enforcement of immigration laws, and perhaps, the federal government may in fact benefit from such assistance from local authorities, a state law that prohibits localities from entering into such agreements does not create any obstacle to that enforcement,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cNew York is not bound by that hope or expectation.\u201d<\/p>\n

D\u2019Agostino added that it would make \u201cno sense\u201d to hold that a federal law based on state cooperation prevents a state law from withholding that cooperation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Any contract ICE has with local agencies must be terminated by Aug. 25, and no new contract will be permitted past that date.\n<\/p>\n

The DOJ didn\u2019t comment on that part of the ruling, but Jame\u2019s office commended it, saying those bans will keep communities safe.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLocal law enforcement should be focused on local matters, and New York taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for any collaboration with ICE,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

Those laws will remain in effect as the case proceeds, whereas the mask ban will not be enforced as the lawsuit moves forward. A more permanent decision on both the laws preventing ICE from entering into contracts with state facilities and wearing masks in New York is expected to come from D\u2019Agostino in the following months. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has blocked a New York law banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from wearing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":980505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5410,409,3228,20524,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-980504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-law","tag-masks","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117038411122453340","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/980505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}