Federal immigration enforcement officers operating in New York will soon be met by legal observers in purple vests.
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on February 3 that her office is launching an initiative called the Legal Observation Project. Trained legal observers from her office—including lawyers and other state employees—will serve as “neutral witnesses” of the federal government’s immigration enforcement activity on the ground in the state, James’s office said.
By observing and recording the actions of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal agencies, which the public has a right to do, the observers will provide the attorney general’s office with information that could one day be used in future legal action if any laws are broken. By having a uniform, they are standing out and identifying themselves.
“We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability,” James said in a statement. “My office is launching the Legal Observation Project to examine federal enforcement activity in New York and whether it remains within the bounds of the law.”
James’s office says specifically that observers from the initiative won’t interfere with enforcement activity and that their job is to merely document federal conduct safely and legally. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
The purple vests these observers wear will bear the insignia of the attorney general’s office. They’re the latest example of state-level officials turning to colored vests amid President Donald Trump’s escalation of federal immigration enforcement. In Minneapolis, the Minnesota National Guard last month began wearing yellow safety vests so people could tell them apart from federal agents.
In the absence of a single dress code, mostly masked federal officers from multiple agencies have worn a range of clothing, from jeans to fatigues and tactical vests in the Minneapolis area. The yellow vests are bright signifiers “to distinguish our members from those of other agencies, due to similar uniforms being worn,” as Minnesota National Guard spokeswoman Army Major Andrea Tsuchiya put it. A safety vest signals that the wearer wants to stand out and actually be recognized.
In New York, the vests’ color “will aid in the ability of the trained legal observers to stand out in a crowd of bystanders and federal agents,” University of Minnesota College of Design faculty lecturer Kathryn Reiley tells Fast Company. “The federal agents tend to wear uniforms that are black, navy blue, or army green. The purple vests will produce the intended result of making the trained legal observers identifiable as a separate group of government employees that are not federal agents.”
The ramping up of New York’s Legal Observation Project comes as the Trump administration is scaling down its enforcement efforts in Minnesota. On February 4, the administration said it’s withdrawing 700 officers immediately, about a 25% reduction.
The reduction in force in Minnesota only came following public pressure made possible thanks to citizen footage that showed the reality on the ground in Minneapolis and galvanized the public against ICE. A 56% majority of U.S. adults have little or no confidence in the agency, according to the latest American Values Survey released this week by the nonpartisan research nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, including 85% of Democrats, nearly two-thirds of independents, and more than one in five Republicans.
