California prohibits police to cover their faces during service. The law signed by the Newsom is including ICE agents
June 8, 2025, Los Angeles, US: protesters faced CHP officers after occupying the 101th Highway from the city center, in protest against immigration rays. Photo: Zuma / Jill Connelly / Splashnews.com / Splash / Profimedia
The governor of California has signed a law that prohibits local and federal police – including the agigent and customs (ICE) agents – to wear masks on the face during the service. The prohibition, which will enter into force on January 1, 2026, is part of a legislative package by which the democratic governor Gavin Newsom says he wants to protect the inhabitants from what he has called “secret police” on the streets, notes the BBC.
The measure comes after federal agents wore masks during some radius of immigration at Los Angeles.
The law provides for exceptions for undercover agents, masks used for protection against vegetation diseases or fires, as well as for tactical equipment.
President Donald Trump has made the strict application of immigration legislation a priority in the second term. In June, a number of Federal Immigration Federal rays in Los Angeles triggered violent protests against the Trump administration and ICE agency. As a reaction to disorders, Trump sent 700 marine prisons and 4,000 members of the National Guard in the second largest city in the country.
Democrat Senator Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, drafted the draft law in response to these practices.
“No one wants masked officers to haunt communities and kidnap people with impunity,” he said. “California will continue to defend the rule of law and fundamental freedoms.”
The legislative initiative comes after the Supreme Court has decided that Los Angeles immigration rays can continue, for now, without agents having reasonable suspicions that a person is illegally in the United States.
This decision allows the agents to stop, interrogate and retain people only on the basis of race, language or job, while a legal appeal regarding recent rays is in the role of courts.
The officers will be obliged to identify by name and number of badges when they carry out their duties.
Other draft laws signed on Saturday by Gavin Newsom prohibit teachers and school employees to allow the access of federal agents that carry out immigration actions inside the educational units without a mandate, a judicial ordinance or a summons issued by the court.
Families will also need to be informed when officers reach their children's schools. The new regulations also protect the data of the students, as well as access to the classrooms.
The non -public areas of hospitals and emergency rooms become, in turn, inaccessible to agents without a mandate or judicial order.
“Immigrants have rights and we have the right to rise and respond,” said Newsom.
Harsh critics from Trump administration
American prosecutor Bill Essayli, named by Donald Trump, said that the state of California “has no jurisdiction on the federal government” and that the law “has no effect on our operations”, specifying that the agents “will continue to protect their identities”.
In a statement sent on Saturday, Tricia Mclaghlin, deputy secretary of the Department for Internal Security, qualified the new laws of California as “disgusting” and “a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers.”
She stressed that the ICE agents and other federal laws for the law “risk their lives every day” to do their job. “There are no doubts: this type of rhetoric contributes to increasing the number of attacks on the officers, by demonizing and stigmatizing them repeatedly.”
This is not the first time that local officials conflict with the White House. In August, the mayor of Chicago signed an order by which he detailed the way the municipality will withstand a possible campaign to repress the immigration announced by the Trump administration.
