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ICE attorneys fighting to deport immigrants are able to obscure their identities — no masks required.

Inside a federal immigration courtroom in NYC last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the ICE attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers.

“We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers.

As each case begins, the judge recites their own name, followed by the immigrant’s name, the name of the immigrant’s attorney (if they have one), and finally, the name of the ICE lawyer. It’s an on-the-record census that enables due process.

Xu attributed the change to “privacy” because “things lately have changed.” Xu told Okun that he could use the DM function of Webex, a virtual meeting software, to send the ICE lawyer his email, and the ICE lawyer would probably respond with her own name and address.

The government’s mystery attorney, who was prosecuting both Okun’s and Gonzalez-Venegas’s clients, wore glasses and a navy blue suit; her hair was pulled back primly from her face. Her name, according to Gonzalez Venegas, was Cosette Shachnow. She began working for ICE in 2021.