Can Newsom stop immigration officers from wearing face coverings?
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a law barring federal immigration officers from wearing face coverings during operations. But does he have the power to control that?
Federal law enforcement
“In a word, no,” Gabriel Chin, law professor at UC Davis, told Straight Arrow News.
Chin said the issue is that federal law enforcement is controlled by the federal government, not by states.
“This has come up many times over the centuries, and the courts are very clear, state courts, really, as well as federal courts, that the state cannot directly regulate federal agents in this way,” Chin said.
The Department of Homeland Security had similar feelings about the law.
“At a time that ICE law enforcement faces a 1,000% increase in assaults and their family members are being doxxed and targeted, the sitting Governor of California signed unconstitutional legislation that strips law enforcement of protections in a disgusting, diabolical fundraising and PR stunt,” the department said on X.
Newsom’s argument
Newsom has said his “No Secret Police Act” is a direct response to the Trump administration’s “lawless immigration raids” in California.
However, without a legal precedent to guide the ruling over federal officers, it’s a tough battle for Newsom.
“I think it’s a substantially uphill battle,” Chin said. “I think it is symbolic as much as anything else.”
Chin said Newsom and the state could try to argue officers shouldn’t be wearing face coverings at all because it’s unnecessary.
“They might argue that this is a rogue conduct,” Chin said. “And there are serious questions that might be raised about law enforcement officers being masked.”
Chin cited the fact that the U.S. is not a country where law enforcement is often targeted by organized crime, so wearing face coverings could be a step too far.
“We don’t have any organized crime entities that are so powerful and so uncontrolled by law that they are finding law enforcement officers in their homes and killing them with impunity,” Chin said. “That, thank heaven, is not something that we have to worry much about in the United States. And so that could be a question, is it, in fact, authorized by federal law for these agents to be masked?”
Law compliance
Even if Newsom were to win that argument, compliance is another issue.
“We don’t need to abide by this garbage,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson reportedly said on social media.
It will be very difficult for the state to get federal officers to comply.
“I seriously doubt that we’re going to see Los Angeles Police Department or Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officers trying to arrest ICE agents or Customs and Border Patrol agents to charge them with violations of these laws,” Chin said.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
