> Or maybe I'm just surprised that a group of law enforcement officers would decide, "Hey, we don't want people to know who we are," and decide to wear masks.

It would be nice to be surprised. It _should_ be surprising. It's unfortunately not surprising at all.

Youth services has been hiding the names of their employees for more than a decade now. A few years back the final shoe dropped: now kids aren't even allowed to know the name of the judge that took them away from their home anymore.

They cite, of course, the same argument ICE makes: threats against them.

Is that legal? Well, their theory is that any kind of "family law" proceeding (including convicting minors of crimes, and locking them up without access to family or schooling for years) is considered civil law. Therefore none of the normal legal rights apply. I would think this is trivially a violation of the constitution, especially because it comes to imprisonment, but clearly it is not, since the justice department has no problems doing it. A child can be locked up for a crime (up to when they get 27 years old, yes, not 18, in some states), even if the present proof they didn't do it. The very, very, very basic legal right to not get convicted of a crime that you didn't do is openly violated by youth services. Right to have a trial? Nope. Right to having the state prove their case? Nope. Right to not get locked up without cause? No. Etc.

Needless to say, this was promptly exploited by some states who gave kickbacks to judges who "delivered" juveniles for private detention facilities. When caught doing this, the justice department promptly declared nobody had done anything wrong (except one of the judges who, in addition to having thousands of kids locked up for money, had lied on his taxes. He was never actually imprisoned, and finally pardoned by the president)

Oh and in case you don't know: locking minors away from school? Yes. Youth services does that. Parents aren't allowed to do that. Schools aren't allowed to do that. The police isn't allowed to do that (minor gets arrested, and wants to go to classes or do your homework? Police has to make it happen). Fucking death row isn't allowed to keep a minor out of school. But youth services IS allowed to do it.

So a secret police in the US? This is not new. What's new is that immigration enforcement started doing it on a large scale.