California became the first state to bar federal immigration agents from wearing masks in pushback against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown that centered on Los Angeles earlier this summer.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed S.B. 627, the “No Secret Police Act,” on Saturday banning the use of most face coverings by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as local law enforcement agents, in an attempt to curb ICE activity in the state. The mandate will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026. Newsom also signed four more bills restraining ICE powers in California, including requiring law enforcement to publicly display their agency and name or badge number, blocking agents from entering schools and hospitals without a warrant, and requiring schools and higher education institutions to notify parents when ICE is on campus.
“The impact of these policies all across this city, our state and nation are terrifying. It’s like a dystopian sci-fi movie—unmarked cars, people in masks, people quite literally disappearing, no due process,” Newsom said at the signing in L.A. “No rights in a democracy where we have rights. Immigrants have rights.”
“This is a disgrace. This is an outrage, what we’ve allowed to happen in this country,” he said. “To ICE, unmask. What are you afraid of?”
Newsom called the bills a “direct response” to President Donald Trump’s “lawless immigration raids and arrests in California.” The new mandate comes as the Trump Administration has ramped up its efforts to recruit ICE agents in order to carry out Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations. The Trump Administration has also restricted legal immigration pathways, including charging companies an annual $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, tightening visa regulations for international students, and imposing more stringent criteria for citizenship and visa applications to screen for “anti-American” views.
“Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today,” the California Governor posted on X before signing the bills. “You’re welcome, America.” Bill Essayli, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, referred Newsom to the Secret Service over the post, saying on X, “We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials.”
The bill will likely face a legal challenge, especially as it’s unclear to what extent the state can regulate federal law enforcement.
Here’s what to know.
Democratic lawmakers protest unfettered ICE activity
Amid the Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign and federal crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration, videos and reports have circulated online of ICE agents wearing masks and taking other steps to apparently conceal their identities.
Earlier this year, when a group of agents detained Turkish Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk in Somerville, Ma., video posted online showed the agents in plainclothes, sunglasses, and masks, and accosting her without providing an explanation. Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University, said “it felt like kidnapping” when plainsclothes officers followed him and his wife into their apartment building and arrested him without showing a warrant. Both Öztürk and Khalil were released by court orders, although an immigration judge this month ordered Khalil to be deported to Algeria or Syria.
It appears to be the first time in American history that law enforcement agents have masked in order to obscure their identities, journalist Sabrina Tavernise wrote in a New York Times column earlier this month. Michael German, a retired FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Tavernise that even during undercover operations, “the period of secrecy ended when charges were brought and I had to defend what I had done in that undercover capacity.”
“Masking provides leeway for abuse,” Tavernise wrote. “People tend to be more scrupulous and vigilant when they can be personally held accountable for their actions. A mask allows more latitude for sloppiness or shortcuts—a punch or a kick, for example.”
Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists across the country have criticized the Trump Administration for giving ICE agents unfettered access to schools, churches, and hospitals, and empowering them to act with impunity. In April, federal immigration agents were denied entry to two Unified School District elementary schools in L.A. after attempting to purportedly conduct welfare checks on allegedly undocumented students. The attempted raid along with other large immigration sweeps in June set off protests against the federal crackdown, to which Trump responded by sending in the National Guard.
“We cannot have masked men coming around, picking up our communities without identifying themselves,” said state senator Lena Gonzalez.
“The militarization of places like Paramount that happened on June 7,” Gonzalez said, referring to Trump’s deployment of the National Guard against protests in L.A. A federal judge ruled earlier this month that the deployment was in violation of federal law. She added, “The green lighting of racial profiling that has been happening all around the state. The kidnapping of students, children and women, many of which are legal residents and U.S. citizens, and the permitting of masked men to pry babies away from their mothers. It’s unfathomable.”
Other states have introduced similar bills banning masking by immigration agents, including New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Virginia. A Democratic Coalition in the House of Representatives introduced H.R. 4176, a similar bill of the same name as California’s in June.
California state senator Scott Wiener, who introduced the California bill, said the state is “meeting the Trump Administration’s secret police tactics with strength and defiance.”
“No one wants masked officers roaming their communities and kidnapping people with impunity,” Wiener said in a statement. “As this authoritarian regime expands its reach into every aspect of daily life—including terrorizing people where they work, where they live, where they go to school, where they shop, where they seek health care — California will continue to stand for the rule of law and for basic freedoms.”
Opposition to the bill
The law, however, will likely face legal challenges.
“The State of California has no jurisdiction over the federal government. If Newsom wants to regulate our agents, he must go through Congress,” Essayli posted on X. He said that he directed federal agents to “continue to protect their identities” and that the law “has no effect on our operations.”
“When can we expect CA to pass a law banning Antifa members from wearing masks while committing state and federal crimes? I’ll wait…” Essayli added. Under California penal code, it is already a misdemeanor to wear a mask or disguise for the purpose of evading police detection or identification in order to commit a crime.
Department of Homeland Security officials called on Newsom to veto the bill on Tuesday, arguing that it would contribute to a “1000% increase in assaults against” the agents.
“Comparing them to ‘secret police’—likening them to the Gestapo—is despicable,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Once again, sanctuary politicians are trying to outlaw officers wearing masks to protect themselves from being doxed and targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”
Several law enforcement organizations opposed the bill, including the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a statewide law enforcement association representing more than 83,000 officers.
“We are a part of California’s communities, which we are proud to serve and call home. Using local law enforcement as a punching bag to grandstand against the federal government should not be an acceptable practice from our state leaders. It is misdirected, misguided, and intolerable,” Brian R. Marvel, president of PORAC, said in a statement. “Instead, this unnecessary bill would effectively ban personal protective equipment—like face shields and gas masks—used in high-risk situations such as riots or chemical exposures.”
Under the California bill, law enforcement officers would be restricted from wearing face coverings like ski masks, balaclavas, and neck gaiters, but can wear medical or safety devices like surgical face masks, translucent or transparent face shields, motorcycle helmets, protective eyewear, and respirators. The bill also makes exceptions for SWAT teams and approved undercover assignments. Breaking the law would result in an infraction or misdemeanor.
Legal experts cautioned that the law may be limited in regulating federal government agents, although federal agents can be required to follow general state and local laws that do not significantly impact their ability to carry out their work. For example, federal employees are required to follow state and local traffic and speeding laws.
Aya Gruber, a constitutional law professor at the University of Southern California, told the Times that the ban “will definitely be challenged.”
“I don’t foresee this particular iteration of the Supreme Court taking the state’s side on this one, so this may be more of a symbolic piece of legislation,” Gruber said.
Even if symbolic, some argue that the law is an important show of opposition amid wide-ranging federal persecution of non-citizens nationwide which critics have said has had a chilling effect on free speech.
At the signing event, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called the five bills a form of “legislative resistance” to the federal government.
Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of Prosecutors Alliance Action, said in a statement that masked law enforcement agents put both the public and themselves at risk.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, wrote in a July op-ed for the Sacramento Bee that wearing a mask does not infringe on ICE agents or the federal government’s ability to perform their duties, and therefore the law should be constitutional.
“Safety of officers is a pretext to justify a practice that exists to intimidate. Drug cartels in other countries use masked assailants to kidnap people off the streets. ICE agents wearing masks is meant to evoke the terror of being kidnapped. It serves no law enforcement purpose,” Chemerinsky wrote.
“If nothing else,” he added, “the law would be a forceful declaration by this state’s elected representatives that the practice of ICE agents operating in masks and without identification is wrong and must stop.”
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