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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.

The concealment shocked two lawyers who were representing immigrants in Xu’s courtroom. Attorney Jeffrey Okun characterized the move as “bizarre.” Attorney Hugo Gonzalez Venegas called Xu’s behavior “a terrible lack of transparency on the part of officers of the court.”

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.

It is unclear how many immigration judges are failing to say ICE lawyers’ names, but The Intercept has witnessed the practice twice.

“This is a very new and very disturbing turn of events,” said Daniel Kowalski, a former longtime immigration attorney who now edits the legal journal Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. “Where does it stop?” asked Kowalski. “Are the immigration judges going to be unnamed? Behind a screen?”