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'Who Is Hiding Behind These Masks?' Raskin Demands Answers on ICE Hiring of Jan 6 Attackers
"The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this administration."
Jan 13, 2026
Congressman Jamie Raskin got right to the point in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as he sought an answer to a question several Democratic lawmakers have raised in recent months regarding the Trump administration's recruiting practices as it seeks to flood American communities with immigration officers.
"How many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists have been hired by your respective departments?" Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the two officials.
The congressman wrote to Bondi and Noem as video evidence continues to mount of federal agents' violent tactics in communities across the US following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent's fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good last week.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said Raskin, "seems to be courting pardoned January 6th insurrectionists."
He pointed to "white nationalist 'dog whistles'" it's used in its recruitment campaigns that appear to target members of "extremist militias" like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters.
Potential ICE recruits have been bombarded by messages from DHS calling on them to help "defend the homeland" and images like one of a white Uncle Sam caricature standing at a crossroads with signs pointing one way—labeled "INVASION" and "CULTURAL DECLINE"—and another, labeled "HOMELAND" and "LAW AND ORDER." The image and caption appeared to be a reference to the white nationalist text Which Way, Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson.
The groups and militias apparently being targeted by the recruitment push coordinated with one another on January 6, 2021 as their members and leaders were among those who stormed the US Capitol in an effort to stop former President Joe Biden's electoral victory from being certified.
One of President Donald Trump's first actions after taking office last year was pardoning more than 1,500 people convicted of participating in the attempted insurrection, and dozens of them have been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes including child sexual assault, possession of child pornography, and domestic violence.
Other Democratic lawmakers have previously raised alarm about the lax hiring requirements DHS has put in place as it seeks to grow its ranks of ICE agents, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) noting in an October letter to Noem that in its push to hire more so-called "patriots," ICE has "changed the age requirements for new recruits."
"DHS announced that applicants now can apply at the age of 18 and there is no age cap. ICE also removed its Spanish-language requirement—shortening the training program by five weeks—and is pursuing additional ways to expedite training," wrote Durbin. "The loosening of hiring standards and training requirements is unacceptable and will likely result in increased officer misconduct—similar to or worse than what occurred during a small surge in hiring US Customs and Border Protection officers in the early 2000s."
On Monday, Raskin pointed out that ICE agents have been permitted to go to great lengths to hide their identities with masks as they've tackled people to the ground, "detained and battered multiple pregnant women," threatened people and confiscated their cellphones for filming them—a protected activity under the First Amendment—and rammed open the door of a home in Minneapolis as they apparently began "door-to-door" operations.
"Unique among all law enforcement agencies and all branches of the armed services, ICE agents conceal their identities, wearing masks and removing names from their uniforms. Why is that? Why do National Guard members, state, county, and local police officers, and members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all routinely work unmasked while ICE agents work masked?" wrote Raskin.
"Who is hiding behind these masks?" he continued. "How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and were convicted of their offenses? The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this administration."
He demanded the release of records related to the solicitation or hiring of anyone charged or investigated for participating in the January 6 attack.
Raskin's letter was sent as independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on leaked documents showing that ICE and Border Patrol officials on the ground are struggling to cope with both staffing and legal compliance issues following Good's killing.
"While Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and others in the administration preen about justifying last week’s shooting and trumpet their war on 'domestic terrorism,' DHS is privately divided and hesitant about the latest deployments," wrote Klippenstein, detailing efforts within the agency to find around 300 volunteers to deploy in Minneapolis, "in part due to opposition within the ranks."
Following DHS' aggressive recruiting push that appears to designed to appeal to extremist militias, "there might be some immature knuckleheads who think they are out there trying to capture Nicolás Maduro, but most field officers see a clear need for deescalation," a high-ranking career official at DHS told Klippenstein. “There is genuine fear that indeed ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington is more creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around.”
Officials are reportedly pushing to rein in the agents whom the Trump administration has unleashed on communities including Minneapolis, where ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good while she was sitting in her car after she had reportedly been given conflicting orders by officers.
While Trump has suggested Good was to blame for her killing because she was "disrespectful" to the officers and videos have surfaced of agents attacking and threatening people for filming and observing them, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino sent a "legal refresher" to agents in the field, reminding them that protesters who use profanity, insults, and rude gestures are not breaking any laws.
Noncompliance with law enforcement and recordings of ICE agents are protected activities, the document reminds officers.
Sarah Saldaña, a former director of ICE, also recently said that DHS' decision to frame its recruiting push as a "war effort" would inevitably result in a federal anti-immigration force that views itself as being at war with the communities it's sent to.
DHS is promoting a viewpoint among recruits that “the quicker we get out there and run over people, the better off this country will be,” Saldaña told the Washington Post days before Good was killed. “That mentality you’re fostering tends to inculcate in people a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85% of what you do.”
A DHS official who spoke to Klippenstein said that "the claim is that recruiting is up, but there is also dread that the gung-ho types that ICE and the Border Patrol are bringing in have a propensity towards confrontation and even violence.”
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Top DOJ Officials Resign After Being Cut Off From Renee Good Killing Probe
"The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans," one former DOJ attorney said recently. "It doesn't exist to enact the president's own agenda."
Jan 13, 2026
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is seeing its latest mass resignation over its handling of the case of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last week in Minneapolis.
Days after Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced that the agency's Civil Rights Division would not be investigating the shooting—despite the fact that the office's criminal unit would ordinarily probe any abuse or improper use of force by law enforcement—four top officials in the section have resigned.
As MS NOW reported Monday night, the chief of the criminal unit—listed on the DOJ website as Jim Felte—has resigned, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief. The outlet reported that other decisions by administration officials also contributed to their decision to leave.
The FBI announced late last week that it would be probing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross' shooting of Good, who was killed while sitting in her car on a street in Minneapolis where ICE was operating—part of a surge of federal immigration agents who have been sent to the area in recent weeks, with the Trump administration largely targeting Somali people.
Despite video evidence showing that Good's wheels were turned away from Ross, who was one of a number of officers who had approached her car and reportedly given her conflicting orders, the Trump administration is continuing to claim that she purposely tried to drive into the ICE agent and that Ross fired "defensive shots"—something law enforcement agents including ICE officers are trained not to do in situations involving a moving vehicle.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office."
As administration officials have aggressively pushed a narrative painting Good as a "domestic terrorist"—a designation that ordinarily would never be used by the government until a full investigation had been carried out—the FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from conducting a probe, leading the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to file a lawsuit Monday.
As the Washington Post reported Monday, the DOJ's Civil Rights Division would typically work alongside the FBI "to guide investigatory strategy" on a case like Good's. Prosecutors with the division were involved in trying the officers who killed George Floyd in MInneapolis and Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office,” Vanita Gupta, who led the division during the Obama administration, told the Post. “I cannot think of another high-profile federal agent shooting case like this when the Civil Rights Division was not involved—its prosecutors have the long-standing expertise in such cases."
Hundreds of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have resigned since President Donald Trump began his second term a year ago. Stacey Young, a former division attorney who left the DOJ soon after Trump was inaugurated, told NPR that the division is "not an arm of the White House."
"The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans," Young said. "It doesn't exist to enact the president's own agenda. That's a perversion of the separation of powers and the role of an independent Justice Department."
Dhillon, who has said the division will work to carry out the president's priorities, said last April that she was "fine" with the mass departure of civil rights attorneys.
“The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws—not woke ideology," she said.
Dhillon's announcement that the division would not investigate Good's killing suggested that the DOJ views probing improper use of force cases as it has in the past as "woke ideology."
The mass resignation at the Civil Rights Division comes a month after more than 200 former DOJ employees signed an open letter condemning "the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel."
"The administration wants you to believe that career staff who fled the Division 'were actively in resistance mode' and 'decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do,'" said the former employeees. "That could not be further from the truth. We left because this administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights."
Now in the wake of Good's killing, said one observer, the division under Dhillon's leadership "refused to probe a murder. The people with consciences walked out."
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Campaigners Push GoFundMe to Remove Fundraisers for ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good
"Until each and every campaign supporting Jonathan Ross is taken down, GoFundMe will remain complicit in legitimizing ICE's campaign of terror and violence on our communities."
Jan 13, 2026
The popular crowdfunding platform GoFundMe is facing mounting pressure to remove campaigns supporting Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide outrage and protests.
One GoFundMe campaign for Ross, a 10-year ICE veteran who has received full backing from the Trump White House, has raised nearly $600,000 as of this writing. The description of the campaign, started by a user named Clyde Emmons, states, "After seeing all the media bs about a domestic terrorist getting go fund me. I feel that the officer that was 1000 percent justified in the shooting deserves to have a go fund me."
Trump administration officials have characterized Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, as a "domestic terrorist" and openly lied about the circumstances of her killing. President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Good "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over" Ross, despite video footage from multiple angles showing no such thing.
The top contributor to the GoFundMe campaign started by Emmons, who called Good a "stupod [sic] bitch who got what she deserved," is Bill Ackman, who gave $10,000. The billionaire hedge fund manager wrote on social media that he "intended to similarly support the GoFundMe for Renee Good’s family" but it was closed by the time he tried to donate.
The advocacy group UltraViolet on Monday launched a petition urging GoFundMe to remove all fundraisers supporting or claiming to support Ross, noting that the platform's policies bar fundraisers in support of individuals accused of violent crimes.
GoFundMe told The Intercept that the company is investigating Emmons' campaign.
"Renee Good was murdered by ICE in cold blood and in plain sight. There can be no equivocation on the gross abuse of force which caused her death, nor can there be any doubt as to the contemptibility of GoFundMe campaigns to support her killer,” Nicole Regalado, vice president of campaigns at UltraViolet, said in a statement. “GoFundMe claims to be committed to helping people, and yet it continues to profit from our pain."
"Until each and every campaign supporting Jonathan Ross is taken down," Regalado added, "GoFundMe will remain complicit in legitimizing ICE's campaign of terror and violence on our communities."
State and federal investigators are currently examining Good's killing, though the FBI has cut Minnesota officials out of the probe, intensifying concerns of a cover-up.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that federal investigators assigned to Good's killing are "looking into her possible connections to activist groups protesting the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement, in addition to the actions of the federal agent who killed her."
"The decision by the FBI and the Justice Department to scrutinize Ms. Good’s activities and her potential connections to local activists is in line with the White House’s strategy of deflecting blame for the shooting away from federal law enforcement and toward opponents they have described as domestic terrorists, often without providing evidence," the Times added.
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