Chicago Officials Call for Identification Requirements for ICE Agents: ‘We Are Asking for Accountability’

Bridgette Adu-Wadier | July 14, 2025, 6:52 pm

Some local officials want Chicago to ban federal immigration agents from wearing masks — and require them to provide some identification.

The call comes as some Illinois members of Congress are pushing for national legislation along those same lines.

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Immigrant rights advocates have reported seeing some Immigration Customs and Enforcement, or ICE, agents wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves during raids. Advocates say that creates fear and hinders accountability.

Leonardo Quintero, chair of the 12th District Police Council, said he’s heard from community members that ICE agents are coming into neighborhoods without any identifying material, arriving in unmarked cars and without badges.

“They (ICE) pull up in tinted cars — usually vans or trucks and they just come in and don’t say anything to anyone,” Quintero said. “People ask them who they are, what they’re representing, what organization, what their name is, and they just refuse or are aggressive towards people — pushing them and refusing to answer.”

Quintero and some other members of the 12th District Police Council wrote a letter last month to Mayor Brandon Johnson and Supt. Larry Snelling calling for a citywide ban on masked federal agents. They haven’t gotten a response yet.

Meanwhile, U.S. Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Chicago) and several others are co-sponsoring a federal bill called the “No Secret Police Act” that would amend the 2002 Homeland Security Act. The legislation calls for a nationwide ban on ICE agents wearing masks, as well as requirements for uniforms and insignias that would make them identifiable.

While politicians are pushing for accountability at the national level, Quintero said there should be rules at the local level to protect communities being targeted by deportations and raids.

“We need to get something on the books,” Quintero said. “There needs to be a way to push back by having local laws and forcing the federal government to have this conversation sooner rather than later.”

Quintero said he and his colleagues are working with some members of the Chicago City Council to get them to also push for local regulations to hold ICE accountable. He encouraged residents who have concerns to reach out to their local officials as well.

“I would love to have just insignias, have names and have no masks — that is the bare minimum that we are asking for,” Quintero said. “We are asking for accountability, transparency. I don’t think those are two measures that are too high to climb and are too high to get over.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Chicago ICE Field Office did not respond to requests for comment from WTTW News.