After the story was published, ICE spokesperson Richard Beam reached out to ask about blurring the faces.
“I fully respect the media’s right to take and use photos taken in a public space and would normally not make such a request,” Beam wrote in the email to Chien. “However, out of a concern for the safety of our personnel I wanted to simply ask.”
The Standard’s managing editor, Jeff Bercovici, said he quickly realized that ICE would need a much stronger case for him and his colleagues to grant the request to alter the images — and that doing so would set a dangerous precedent.
“That’s the kind of thing that anybody who works in law enforcement, anybody who works in government, any powerful person in the tech industry could say,” Bercovici said. “If we were to consider every time someone makes a plea like that, we would basically not run pictures of people with power or people who are involved with controversial government policy.”
To his knowledge, ICE is the only law enforcement agency that has made such a request of the Standard. It’s unclear how often ICE makes these requests to media outlets, but Beam told KQED that the agency “routinely” does so.
David Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that while government officials can always ask, there is no law barring media outlets from publishing photos or other identifying information of officers conducting operations in public — such as on the street in front of immigration court.
“If it’s just a polite request, the government has the right to ask,” Loy said. “What the government should never do is make it the least bit coercive or threatening, in substance if not in form.”
