ICE is wearing masks while making arrests across Pennsylvania. Some state lawmakers want to ban them from covering their faces.

One week after chants of “show your face” echoed across the parking lot as more than a dozen, mostly masked ICE agents arrested 14 people at Super Gigante grocery store in Norristown, Democratic state lawmakers are preparing legislation to ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from wearing masks when making arrests or detainments in Pennsylvania.

The use of the face coverings to make agents unidentifiable while making arrests in immigrant communities has become a national flashpoint in recent weeks, as Democratic lawmakers challenge President Donald Trump’s efforts to make good on his campaign promise of mass deportations. It remains unclear whether state law would successfully dictate restrictions on federal ICE agents.

“It’s putting everybody at risk, because nobody knows who’s who,” said Stephanie Benson, an organizer with Unides Para Servir Norristown, who watched in the parking lot as masked agents, some wearing blue jeans, T-shirts and tactical vests, shuffled people into unmarked cars.

Democratic state lawmakers and advocates worry more incidents they describe as marked by confusion and chaos will ensue as the federal government infuses an extra $75 billion into ICE, including $30 billion to support arrests and deportations.

ICE operations continue to surge across the state. Agents arrested nearly 5,000 people in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania between the start of the second Trump administration and late June. Between May 22 and June 26, average daily arrests doubled to 51 a day from their previous average of 26 a day.

The state’s average monthly rate of removals from the United States has also soared since Trump took office, with an 81% increase from President Joe Biden’s administration. That uptick comes as some polls show support slipping for the deportation agenda that helped Trump win the support of American voters in November.

This month alone in Philadelphia, ICE officers have detained people at their homes, after asylum court appointments, and at expanded workplace enforcement checks. Concerns about safety amid increased detainments led two Venezuelan groups to drop out of Philadelphia’s July Fourth celebrations.

Masking contributes to ICE officers’ general lack of formal identification, such as badge numbers, according to Peter Pedemonti, co-director of the New Sanctuary Movement.

As a result, people “don’t know who’s abducting their father,” he said.

The lack of clarity around individual identities, coupled with ICE officers’ general refusal to identify themselves when asked to do so, leads to uncertainty about the specific group or agency carrying out the operation, Pedemonti and Benson said.

“A lot of times [ICE agents] are impersonating police. They have police vests, they use sirens, even if it’s not a vehicle that’s actually a police vehicle,” Benson said.

The Philadelphia Police Department works with federal agencies through several multiagency task forces, but no PPD officers work with ICE-led task forces, according to ​Sgt. Eric Gripp, a spokesperson for the department. PPD is currently reviewing its task force agreements “to strengthen guidance to ensure that everyone’s roles remain clear and fully consistent with Mayor’s Executive Order 5-16, which limits local cooperation with civil immigration enforcement,” he said.

When asked for comment on the common practice of ICE agents wearing masks and plain clothes, Gripp responded, “the operational decisions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — including decisions related to uniforms or tactical gear — are solely at the discretion of that agency.”

In Philadelphia, people have taken advantage of ICE officers’ lack of clear identification by impersonating them to commit crimes. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in June charged a man with ICE agent impersonation during a robbery in Northeast Philadelphia. Pedemonti said others have impersonated ICE agents in attempts to extort money from vulnerable immigrants.

The soon-to-be-proposed bill, known as the Officer Visibility Act, is expected to require government agents in the state to wear official uniforms and badge numbers and prohibit face coverings unless they are used for medical reasons or warranted, undercover work.

The proposal is part of efforts to increase public safety and public trust in law enforcement by providing transparency about officers’ identities, according to the bill’s authors, Rep. Paul Friel (D., Chester) and Rep. Rick Krajewski (D., Philadelphia).

The legislation would tighten criminal penalties for impersonating law enforcement in violent situations, and tighten civil penalties for government officials concealing their identities, according to a July 17 memo. Lawmakers expect to introduce the bill in the coming weeks.

“This is the first step we can be taking to giving people some basic tools to defend their civil liberties,” Krajewski said.

Elsewhere in Harrisburg, state Sens. Nikil Saval (D., Philadelphia) and Amanda Cappaletti (D., Montgomery) are working together to propose similar legislation in the Senate.

In an interview, Saval raised concern about what the increase in federal spending on immigration enforcement could mean for civil rights. “There is a huge increase in recent funding to what is essentially a secret police force that is terrorizing our communities …which to me, is reminiscent of Jim Crow,” he said.

Friel and Krajewski were inspired to work on the legislation by a bill moving through the California state legislature to make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers to wear masks while performing official duties. New York and Massachusetts lawmakers have also introduced similar pieces of legislation.

It remains unclear to Krajewski whether or not federal ICE officers would defy a state law under the Trump administration.

“I can’t speak with certainty that the federal government is going to obey our legislation because we have seen them defy orders regularly, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t put out these positions and make statements and try and advocate,” Krajewski said.

ICE will continue allowing its officers to wear masks on operations, its director Todd Lyons told CBS News on Sunday.

“I’m not a proponent of the masks,” he said. “However, if that’s a tool that the men and women of ICE to keep themselves and their family safe, then I will allow it.”

Lyons called for elected officials to hold people accountable for doxxing or threatening ICE officers, in addition to introducing legislation to ban masks.

“If we had that kind of support and had those laws or regulations in place, that we can hold those folks accountable to give ICE agents and officers and other law enforcement officers the peace of mind that someone that does threaten their life or their families or doxes them will be held accountable,” he said.

But Benson says recording and photographing ICE agents has nothing to do with doxxing them. “We’re doing it to document civil rights abuses” for immigrants and the broader community, she said.

Elena Eisenstadt is an intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association. She can be reached at [email protected]om.