Democrats move to make ICE agents unemployable in California

California Democrats want to make President Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unemployable.

The California Senate passed the Get the Feds Out Act on Sunday, banning immigration enforcement agents from virtually all public-sector roles in the state. It now awaits the signature of Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom.

'They should be grateful that ICE officers stepped up to keep criminal illegal aliens off of California’s streets.'

The state Assembly voted to advance the bill 53-21 in May and concurred with Senate amendments on Monday.

“Since the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025, immigration enforcement agents have carried out an indiscriminate mass terror campaign against innocent men, women, and children across the nation,” the bill reads.

Assemblyman Mark Gonzalez and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who authored the bill, crafted the legislation to specifically target ICE agents serving under the Trump administration.

Though primarily intended to prohibit ICE agents from becoming California police officers, Gonzalez and Rivas made the bill expansive enough that it excludes them from any public employment.

With few exceptions, under the bill, any ICE officer or contractor involved in immigration enforcement between January 20, 2025, and January 20, 2029, would be ineligible for employment with the state as well as all California cities, counties, and other public entities. If signed into law, the bill will take effect January 1, 2028.

“We have the fourth-largest economy in the world because of our immigrant and undocumented community, and they’re being penalized and targeted by the Trump administration,” Gonzalez told the L.A. Times on Tuesday after the bill passed the state legislature. “This package of immigrant bills that we’ve sent [to the governor] is trying to say that we are here to defend you.”

Gonzalez and Rivas did not respond to requests for comment.

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Newsom doesn't actually need to sign the bill for it to become law, according to the California Constitution. Bills that reach the governor's desk at the end of the legislative session sit for 30 days. If the governor takes no action on it, the bill is automatically enacted as if it were signed.

Newsom's office did not respond when asked whether he would sign the bill, though he has been consistently critical of ICE. The governor has previously referred to the agency as "not law enforcement," a "secret police," and Trump's "private police force."

ICE expanded its operations in Newsom's back yard after Trump took office. Between January 2025 and July 2026, ICE arrested over 50,000 people in California, according to records acquired by UC Berkeley Law and UCLA’s Deportation Data Project.

“We have immigration laws for a reason. And they do have to be enforced, just like we have our laws that we pass here, and we expect them to be enforced by our law enforcement officers,” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher said in a May hearing about the bill. “This bill is blatantly unconstitutional.”

California is already struggling to keep cops.

Department staffing peaked in 2008 and has declined since. Head count dropped sharply after 2020, with about 3,600 officers leaving the force in just two years. Staffing levels remain below pre-pandemic and pre-Black Lives Matter riot levels.

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“Our concern, again, is we have many agencies throughout the state who are short, extremely short, sometimes 28% short on manpower, which is dangerous, not only [for] the officers but the community,” Peace Officers Research Association of California President Randy Perry told the state Senate in July.

Sacramento is California’s most understaffed police department, with 43% of necessary positions unfilled, according to PORAC.

"Many of ICE’s new recruits are former law enforcement officers, military, or former ICE officers who retired or quit under President Biden because they were frustrated about not being able to do their jobs," a DHS spokesperson told Blaze News.

“California sanctuary politicians are casting federal law enforcement as villains while ICE officers are being targeted, threatened, and doxxed simply for doing their jobs," the spokesperson said. "They should be grateful that ICE officers stepped up to keep criminal illegal aliens off of California’s streets."

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