New California Law Shields Taxpayer-Funded Entities

An immigration activist group that receives substantial taxpayer funding helped push a California law creating new privacy protections for immigrant-service organizations, drawing criticism from watchdogs who say the measure will reduce transparency and public accountability.

AB 2624, which California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in August, extends a privacy program to immigrant-serving nonprofits, their staff, and volunteers, allowing them to acquire substitute addresses in public records rather than their home and business addresses. The law also bans anyone from posting information on the internet with the intent of enabling another person to threaten violence against an immigration support services provider.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights—which received more than two-thirds of its revenue from government grants between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2025—co-sponsored, testified in support of, and lobbied for the bill. CHIRLA, which operates an “immigrant political power project,” did not respond when asked whether it expects to apply for the protections in the bill.

“Our concern about it is the overbroad language and the creation of a protected class of people from the scrutiny of using our First Amendment rights,” Jenny Rae Le Roux, director of California DOGE, told the Daily Signal in an interview Thursday.

Eric Soskin, the team leader for Florida’s DOGE initiative, echoed Le Roux.

“If money is going to flow to non-governmental entities, then transparency requirements should go with that, and if you’re going to take taxpayer money, purportedly for a public purpose, all the accountability that goes with the government spending such money on behalf of taxpayers should extend to you, as well,” he told the Daily Signal.

Investigative journalist Nick Shirley, represented by America First Legal, has already filed a legal challenge against AB 2624, which goes into effect in October 2027. Shirley’s complaint states that the law imposes liability for publishing certain information about immigration service providers “even when that information is lawfully obtained and published as part of reporting on matters of public concern.”

Shirley, who gained a reputation for exposing fraud in Minnesota, alleges that the law was introduced to combat his reporting. The lawsuit notes that Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta criticized Shirley shortly after he entered California earlier this year, and that Assemblymember Mia Bonta—the attorney general’s wife—filed the bill shortly after this criticism.

“This law has nothing to do with Nick Shirley,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, chief deputy director of communications for Gov. Newsom, told the Daily Signal in a statement Friday.

“It allows immigration service providers to shield their personal information—such as their home address—to protect themselves from getting doxxed and harassed,” she added.

Jorge-Mario Cabrera, director of communications at CHIRLA, insisted that the law represents a response to increased threats.

“Harassment, doxing, and even hate crimes perpetrated against immigrants and organizations which serve them has been up since the start of the new administration’s hateful rhetoric and crackdown,” Cabrera told the Daily Signal. “AB 2624 addresses some of those concerns.”

Le Roux challenged this claim, however. She insisted that threats of violence and intimidation were already illegal under California law.

“We actually already had statutes on the books in California that would have protected them from everything that they said that this law protects them from,” she told the Daily Signal. “The new law aims to obfuscate or hide what these organizations are doing from the public.”

Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, noted that many immigration groups have attempted to reveal the identities of immigration enforcement officials.

“When many of these groups threaten and dox [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents and others on the Right, their complaints of receiving threats themselves fail the laugh test,” she told the Daily Signal.

Le Roux emphasized the need for transparency.

“Do we, the people of our state and nation, have the right, the protected rights, to know what our government is doing?” she asked. “To know what it’s spending money on, or do the organizations providing government services have the right to protect themselves from that?”

Neither Attorney General Rob Bonta nor Assemblymember Mia Bonta responded to the Daily Signal’s requests for comment by publication time.

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