A Reagan-appointed federal judge just torched President Donald Trump’s ICE agents, comparing their masked tactics to the Ku Klux Klan and accusing the administration of terrorizing immigrant students for speaking out about Gaza. In a 161-page ruling issued in Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge William G. Young said the Trump team’s campaign against campus critics trampled basic constitutional rights and relied on intimidation rather than law.
Young’s opinion did not hold back, ripping into Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deploying masked agents during arrests, rejecting the government’s claim that face coverings were about officer safety. “ICE goes masked for a single reason, to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” Young wrote, before asking the courtroom to imagine a U.S. Marine hiding behind a mask. “It is a matter of honor, and honor still matters.” He then drew a straight line to America’s ugliest history, writing, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan.”
The case centers on Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, whose arrest became a national flashpoint after masked agents detained her shortly after she criticized her university’s response to the war in Gaza. Young concluded that the administration unlawfully targeted pro-Palestinian student activists.
Young’s ruling also took aim at intimidation directed toward the court itself. He addressed a threatening message sent to his chambers in an attempt to sway his decision and responded by quoting Abraham Lincoln, reminding the government that “we cannot escape history” and that honor or dishonor will follow this administration “to the latest generation.” It was the voice of a judge who clearly believed the stakes were bigger than a single deportation case.
Legal observers say his language is extraordinary and deliberate. By invoking the Klan, Young framed secretive, masked arrests as fundamentally un-American conduct for armed officers of the state. Reporters who reviewed the lengthy opinion highlighted passage after passage calling the government’s testimony “disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable,” and underscoring that the United States has never tolerated an “armed masked secret police.”
The decision comes amid growing criticism of masked immigration raids. Retired police chief and Brown University professor Brandon del Pozo argued that policing requires visible accountability. “I never for a second thought of hiding my face from the public, hiding my face from the people I policed,” he said. “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.” The court record and experts converge on a simple idea: masks spread fear, and fear is the point.
The Trump administration has maintained that masking protects agents from doxxing and retaliation, but Young dismissed that as a pretext. He even noted that ICE often requires military-style security to operate in communities it has alienated, and questioned why U.S. troops, who face greater dangers, do not hide their faces. The comparison, delivered by a Reagan appointee, carries political weight.
For Öztürk and other students swept up in the crackdown, the ruling is more than a sharp rebuke. It’s a constitutional line in the sand, a reminder that masks, secrecy, and fear tactics have no place in American democracy. If the administration wants to enforce immigration laws, Young wrote in effect, it must do so openly with accountability.
God Bless Judge William G. Young. Remember his name when the question is asked, Who finally had the courage to stand for honor above all else.