This bill would ban ICE agents from future hiring as a public employee in California

A Southern California lawmaker is behind new legislation that would disqualify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or other law enforcement personnel who engage in immigration enforcement activities from being hired as a local, county or state public agency employee in California.

The ban on employment would apply to those who are actively involved in arresting and deporting people between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2029 — the duration of President Donald Trump‘s second term — and would disqualify them from future employment as a police officer, peace officer, public school teacher or civil servant, among other jobs.

“I am introducing a bill today that draws a moral line here in California. We’re calling it like we see it, like we feel it, and respectfully, the GTFO ICE Bill — in other words, Get the Feds Out,” said Assemblymember Mark González, D-Los Angeles, apparently playing off another acronym that normally involves an expletive.

The official text of the proposed bill was not yet available on Friday, Feb. 6, but González, who is co-introducing the legislation with Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, said people who engage in permissible law enforcement activities as outlined under California’s sanctuary state law, known as SB 54, would be exempt from his proposed employment ban. (An example of an exemption would be if a law enforcement agent arrested a violent, convicted offender.)

The intent of the bill, he said, is to bar future public employment for agents who are on the ground and actively rounding up and arresting people as part of Trump’s mass deportation program.

“The message is very simple: If you choose to terrorize communities instead of serving them, California will not reward you with a public paycheck,” the Assembly member said during a press conference.

González said details of the bill are still being worked out and hasn’t decided whether the restriction on future public employment in California should be a lifetime ban.

The press conference was held outside the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. The location of the event was no accident.

It was here in 1942 that Japanese Americans were ordered to report and be transported to internment camps during World War II.

It was also here that federal agents carried out an immigration enforcement operation last August as Gov. Gavin Newsom led a kickoff rally in support of Proposition 50, the congressional redistricting measure which voters ultimately passed.

State Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, who is considering signing on as a co-author of the proposed legislation, said since Trump returned to office, “immigration enforcement has transformed into something unrecognizable — militarized authoritarian force that operates without warrants, without accountability, without any sense of humanity.”

Similar legislation was introduced last month by Assemblymember Anamarie Ávila Farías, a Democrat from the Bay Area.

Her bill would disqualify someone from becoming a peace officer or working in school settings — as a teacher, principal, superintendent or other administrative positions, for example — if they worked for ICE between Sept. 1, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2029, or for corrections departments in Alabama or Georgia between Jan. 1, 2020, and Jan. 1, 2026.

Democrats in the state legislature are pushing a number of immigration-related bills this year.

The Senate recently advanced legislation that would make it easier for people to sue federal immigration officials if their civil rights are violated.

Sen. Tony Strickland, who, along with the rest of his GOP colleagues, voted against SB 747, criticized the effort at the time of the vote as “a little bit more about politics and a little less about policy.”