A Nation Hides its Shame

On April 23, 2026 in Philadelphia, PA, the City Council voted to approve one of the most far-reaching and high-profile legislative mandates in the country to limit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions in their city. With a 94% favorable vote of City Council, the legislative package now passes to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s desk, where she can sign it into law, allow it to become law without her signature, or veto it. During her tenure as mayor, Mayor Parker has never vetoed a bill that’s been passed by City Council.

One of the bill’s key measures is a ban prohibiting Philadelphia law enforcement agents–both federal and local– from hiding their faces behind masks. Let’s take a look at this issue. ICE officials argue in support of the use of masks because agents are “operating in a hyperpartisan political environment,” and because some agents have had “private information published online, leading to death threats against them and their families.” U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, seconds this rationale, saying that agents’ families could be targeted and that “they are organizing…people to put [agents’] names out there.” (“Unmasking ICE in Philly could test the limits of local power over federal agents,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 24, 2026.)

Aren’t these arguments that support the use of masks by ICE the same arguments City Council is using to fight against ICE? Philadelphia is concerned that its residents are being targeted in a hyperpartisan atmosphere, and that their private information is routinely accessed for illegal purposes. Many online and in-person surveillance methods are used by ICE. ICE also has access to information from license plate readers that track your movements. Data brokers regularly cull and sell personal information used to generate profiles of individuals. Facial recognition software is frequently used by law enforcement. ICE also has established partnerships with other federal agencies that already hold access to people’s private data. Additional such methods can be used by ICE. Philadelphians and their families are daily being placed in jeopardy.

One way to explain how an oppressive force (ICE) can take up the same argument as those it oppresses (private, law-abiding individuals) is by understanding the dynamics of shame. It’s a common human reaction concerning behavior we don’t want to acknowledge in ourselves–or that we don’t want others to recognize in us– to shift responsibility for that behavior onto someone else instead. All of us frequently use this maneuver unconsciously, unaware we’re doing so. We assign behavior we don’t like in ourselves to someone else. This is called psychological “projection,” and it’s used every day, everywhere. (If Patty doesn’t want to recognize that she’s an angry person, she’ll see anger in others instead of herself.)

The same move can be done deliberately, too, by purposely shifting blame and responsibility away from ourselves onto someone else. When it’s done deliberately, it’s not psychological projection. It’s malicious deceit.

Shame is our most frequent reason for blame-shifting. We both loathe feeling ashamed and loathe being accused of shaming someone else. Much better to ditch that emotion entirely and claim that someone else is responsible for any shame that’s around.

The routine wearing of black face masks is a dead give-away about the prominent presence of shame and shameful behavior at all levels of ICE’s activities. ICE agents wear masks to hide who they are as they break society’s norms–a concise definition of what constitutes shameful behavior. (See Chapter 8, How Shame Shapes Society.) Such masks serve two purposes concerning shame. They relieve an agent from the need to acknowledge that he’s the person shamefully harming another, and they prevent an agent from being identified by onlookers as the person responsible for shamefully harming another.

An ICE agent is highly unlikely to admit this dynamic of shame, or to admit feeling shame at all. That’s the nature of how we view shame, as the emotion we most want to deny and hide, from both ourselves and others.  

There’s an additional possibility here, that an ICE agent is acting without feeling shame, that he’s behaving shamelessly. In this case, he’ll experience no shame. He’ll sense no wound to his integrity when he harms another, now in accordance with what’s become a national prerogative. It’s fine to break laws and harm others when an authority you admire has announced you have the privilege to do so. In Chapter 19, you’ll learn the distinction between “shameful” and “shameless” behavior. You’ll also learn to decode the phenomenon of shame in our society today to more fully understand its dynamics.

Look out for symbols that reveal through what they hide. Many expose our current, national shame. Nothing suggests the likelihood of shameful behavior quite like the routine, official donning of a black face mask.