California Gov. Gavin Newsom holds a bill signing event related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on Aug. 21, 2025, in Sacramento, California. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
By Michael Austin September 7, 2026 at 5:30am
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom could sign a bill that would make former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unemployable in the state’s public sector.
The legislation, which is called the “Get the Feds Out Act,” — or the “GTFO Act” — was passed by the California Senate at the end of August, per a report from Blaze Media.
The California Assembly already voted 53 to 21 in May to advance the legislation and concurred with Senate amendments in August.
Newsom has not said whether he would sign the bill.
The bill’s legislative findings assert that since President Donald Trump started his second term, ICE agents “have committed grave, inhumane, and horrific patterns of hate, abuse, violence, and even execution.”
They also claimed ICE agents are responsible for “an indiscriminate mass terror campaign against innocent men, women, and children across the nation.”
The bill cited examples of such purported abuses, including the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during altercations with ICE.
“Immigration enforcement agents have reportedly used phrases such as ‘I was just following orders’ to continue to perpetuate harm, including by agents who fatally shot innocent civilians,” the bill continued.
Anyone who was engaged in immigration enforcement — with some examples for local and state agencies — would be “disqualified from public employment.”
The ban applies to anyone engaged in such work between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2029 — the full breadth of Trump’s second term.
USA Today noted that the “Get the Feds Out Act” marks the first legislation of its kind in the nation.
The outlet reported that a second bill is aiming to ban California law enforcement officials from taking a second job to help with immigration enforcement.
“There’s a dangerous loophole in state law currently, and that is that there are no explicit policies in the more than 55 police departments that we identified that have a single policy that prohibits secondary employment with the Department of Homeland Security. Moonlighting,” California Democratic Assemblymember Isaac Bryan said earlier this year.
“It’s important that we close this loophole because there is tremendous fear in California. There’s fear that the law enforcement officers, the cops who protect and serve during the day, are masked up, terrorizing and kidnapping at night,” he continued.
“There’s also important disclosures that have not — that don’t currently exist about how frequent this practice is happening, where and if it is happening.”
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Michael wrote for several entertainment news outlets before joining The Western Journal in 2020. He now serves as Managing Editor, which involves managing the editorial team and operations, guiding the publication’s editorial direction, and writing, editing, curating and assigning stories as needed.
Birthplace
Ames, Iowa
Nationality
American
Education
Iowa State University
Topics of Expertise
Cultural Politics, Pop Culture, Christian-Conservatism
