Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday September 20 signed four bills into law which are intended to shield illegal immigrants and their children from operations carried out by federal immigration enforcement agents in workplaces, schools and hospitals and requiring those agents to remain unmasked.
Signed were Senate Bill 89, authored by State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez of Alhambra; Assembly Bill 49 by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi of Rolling Hills Estates; Senate Bill 81 by State Senator Jesse Arreguín of D-Berkeley; and Senate Bill 627, drafted by state senators Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Jesse Arreguín.
Senate Bill 89 requires school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on grade school, middle school, high school or college campus. Assembly Bill 49 prohibits immigration agents from coming into nonpublic areas of a school without a judicial warrant or court order and make it illegal for school districts or school employees to provide information about students, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant. Senate Bill makes it illegal for a healthcare official to disclose a patient’s immigration status or birthplace to immigration authorities or permit them into nonpublic spaces in hospitals or medical clinics without a search warrant or court order. Senate Bill 627 requires that law enforcement officers, including federal immigration officers, cannot engage in detaining or arresting members of the public, including migrants at their workplaces, be unmasked. California Highway Patrol officers are exempt from the provisions of Senate Bill 627 but sheriff’s deputies and municipal and school police officers are not.
In signing the bills, Newsom said the current federal immigration law enforcement push had taken on the aspect of repression practiced by authoritarian regimes.
“We’re not North Korea,” the governor said.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said the legislation, which federal officials maintain will hamstring agents in the execution of their duties, was justified.
“The Trump Administration claims to target the worst of the worst, but has instead targeted hardworking people without criminal records, including parents of U.S. citizens, and even people with legal status and part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, while also targeting children,” Newsom’s office told the Sentinel. “Meanwhile, they are diverting law enforcement from focusing on child predator cases, drug interdiction and other serious crimes to focus on civil immigration enforcement. The Trump Administration also continues to target worksites despite significant concerns from business leaders, including the agricultural sector, and Republicans.”
The legislation is intended to counter the pernicious influence White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen N. Miller is having on President Donald Trump, according to Newsom’s staff.
“Trump and Stephen Miller’s immigration agenda is built on arbitrary quotas and few guardrails for fairness or due process,” Newsom’s office stated. “In California, their tactics have terrorized communities, traumatized students, disrupted businesses, and endangered public safety for American citizens. For Trump and Miller, the only metric is mass arrests, detentions, and removals — even at the expense of Americans’ constitutional rights. ICE [Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents have wrongfully arrested citizens, concealed their identities, and undermined transparency. They dismantled rules that once kept enforcement away from schools, hospitals, and churches, fueling student absences and eroding community trust.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing people to be targeted because of how they look or where they work has only brought further pain and fear to so many, especially many Latino Californians.
After asserting that Governor Newsom in his encouragement of the drafting of and signing of Assembly Bill 49 and Senate Bills 81, 89 and 627 was seeking to reassure and protect Latinos that were being terrorized by the immigration policies of the federal government, his office made the somewhat contradictory claim that the governor has consistently tried to facilitate the removal of undocumented migrants through cooperation with ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol.
“Under California law, state prison officials communicate and coordinate with immigration authorities” Newsom’s office insisted. “And under the Newsom Administration, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation CDCR has coordinated with the Federal Government more than 10,000 times – a fact that the Trump Administration simply ignores because it doesn’t fit their preferred narrative. Lastly, the governor has twice vetoed bills that would have limited the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s coordination with ICE: Assembly Bill 1306 (Carrillo) in 2023, and a different version — Assembly Bill 1282 in 2019.
Democrats have made a point of layering into their multiple layers of criticisms of Donald Trump that he is “unpresidential.” In signing the bills aimed at compromising the federal immigration enforcement effort in California, Governor Newsom could not resist in engaging in some gloating that was widely perceived as decidedly “ungubernatorial.” Prior to signing the bills, Newsom’s posted on the social media platform X that “[Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America.”
This provoked Bill Essayli, President Trump’s designee as the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. Essayli, interpreting what the governor had posted to be a threat, responded with an posting on X of his own. “We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials,” Essayli wrote, and he said his office was going to work in conjunction with the U.S. Secret Service to carry out a “full threat assessment” of Newsom’s statement.
Moreover, with regard to the substance and legal implication of Assembly Bill 49 and Senate Bills 81, 89 and 627, Essayli asserted the State of California has no authority over the federal government and that he is directing federal agencies to maintain their current policies in the face of the state legislation. “If Newsom wants to regulate our agents, he must go through Congress,” Essayli posted. wrote.
Who, precisely, will enforce the new laws or their various aspects is an open question. Most logically, that task would fall to the California Highway Patrol, which doubles as the California State Police, as well as county sheriff’s offices and police department. Federal law trumps state law, under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. Thus, even if state or local agencies had the will to interrupt federal operations, under most interpretations of the law of the land, do not have the authority to do so. Historically, law enforcement agencies are extremely reluctant to interfere in the operations of another law enforcement agency, generally.
The entire matter at hand pointed up a stark partisan divide. Pérez, Muratsuchi, Arreguín and Wiener, like Newsom, are all Democrats. Their bills signed by Newsom on September 20 all passed with overwhelming Democratic support and at least some Republican opposition.
The 55-year-old Wiener, who has ambition of becoming the first openly homosexual governor of California as well as eventually acceding to the U.S. Presidency, engaged in rhetorical flourishes with regard to his legislation and the other bills signed into law by Governor Newsom that exceeded that of the governor.
Wiener decried governmental operations that relied on its agents who are anonymous and masked, denouncing them as “secret police” and who had stooped to tactics reminiscent of those in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Tricia McLaughlin, the spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Wiener’s characterization of Immigration and Customes Enforcement agents as members of the Gestapo is “beneath contempt.”
Trump Administration officials maintain that masks are necessary to protect the identities and safety of immigration officers.