And after another fatal shooting in Minnesota, the questions around President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement strategy are growing harder to dismiss. But the masks are still on. The names are still withheld.
Speculation intensified this week following the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino confirmed the agents were quickly returned to duty, just not in Minnesota, and declined to identify them. The silence, paired with their rapid reassignment, has only deepened suspicions already swirling around Trump’s increasingly opaque ICE operations.
Alex Pretti’s hospital colleagues hold a moment of silence in his honor 💔 pic.twitter.com/RpXWtdkOPk
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) January 26, 2026
Journalists and activists who have spent years tracking pro-Trump militant groups now say the faces behind the masks may not be unfamiliar at all, reports Raw Story.
Independent visual journalist Sandi Bachom, who documented the Proud Boys, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and the January 6 Capitol riot, says what she’s seeing now feels disturbingly familiar.
“Because I filmed the Proud Boys for years, because I was in Charlottesville and at January 6, and spent months filming ICE agents in Federal Plaza, I’m convinced they are the same people,” Bachom said. “It’s impossible to suddenly find a whole new army of aggressive, violent, immature, Call of Duty Trump sycophants. That’s why they’re masked. People are going to start figuring it out.”
Because I filmed the Proud Boys for years, because I was in Charlottesville and on January 6 riot, and spent five months filming the ICE agents in Federal Plaza I’m convinced they are the same people. It’s impossible to find a whole new army of aggressive, violent, immature, Call…
— Sandi Bachom 📹 (@sandibachom) January 27, 2026
Bachom’s claims remain speculative, but they echo a growing chorus of concerns raised by lawmakers, journalists, and civil rights observers following Trump’s sweeping pardons of roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants — one of his first acts after returning to the White House.
Those pardons wiped clean the records of individuals tied to extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters, the organizations that played prominent roles in the Capitol attack and had long styled themselves as self-appointed defenders of Trump. For years, Trump flirted openly with these groups, telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 debate and later praising January 6 defendants as “patriots” and “hostages.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) raised the alarm earlier this month in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following a separate ICE shooting in Minnesota.
ICE and Trump are ravaging the social contract and waging bloody war on the citizenry.
The vast majority of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are being trampled right now in Minnesota. We need a nationwide political mobilization across the political spectrum to defend the 1st… pic.twitter.com/MSaQHmhqyb
— Jamie Raskin (@jamie_raskin) January 25, 2026
“The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this Administration,” Raskin wrote. “Who is hiding behind these masks?”
While DHS has denied any systematic recruitment of extremists, there is also very little transparency. Senate Democrats have threatened to withhold funding without some significant changes, including potential bans on masking by federal agents. Several states are backing legislation that would prevent law enforcement officers from hiding their identities while on duty.
Journalist Robert A. George framed the issue more bluntly.
“Are ICE agents actual bad dudes the administration hired rapidly with no background checks — possibly criminal, maybe pardoned J6ers — and the administration doesn’t want that information getting out?” he asked. “If so, the masks aren’t symbolic. They’re a literal cover-up.”
There is another, more disturbing prospect: Are ICE agents actual bad dudes the administration hired rapidly with no background checks — possibly criminal (maybe pardoned J6ers?) — and the administration doesn’t want that information getting out? IOW, the masks represent a… https://t.co/naY2OybVfM
— Robert A. George (@RobGeorge) January 27, 2026
Even longtime observers of far-right movements say something has shifted. University of Washington biologist Carl T. Bergstrom noted that extremist groups once obsessed with publicly backing law enforcement have grown conspicuously quiet around ICE.
“They used to march openly in support of police,” Bergstrom wrote. “Now they’re never out there supporting ICE. It’s like Superman and Clark Kent.”
On the ground in Minneapolis, activists see the same overlap. One person shared that ICE agents on the streets cannot be distinguished from known extremist groups except for their uniforms.
“They’ve given them badges and let them run wild,” he said.
For now, the Trump administration insists there’s nothing to see. But as masks remain firmly in place and questions continue to pile up, the central concern refuses to go away. How safe are Americans when accountability and identity go hand-in=hand?
