A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked California from requiring federal immigration agents to display identification during operations, handing the state a setback in its effort to regulate how those agents carry out arrests and detentions. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said California had gone too far in trying to police Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
The panel found that the No Vigilantes Act violated the Constitution’s supremacy clause and said section 10 of the law “attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions.” It added that “The Supremacy Clause forbids the State from enforcing such legislation.”
The ruling, issued by a 9th Circuit panel with two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee, blocks one part of a broader California push against unidentified federal immigration operations. Last fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills aimed at reports that unidentified federal agents were carrying out arrests and detaining illegal immigrants in the state. One measure, the No Vigilantes Act, required ICE agents to display identification. The other, the No Secret Police Act, banned ICE agents from wearing masks.
Newsom framed the effort as a matter of public accountability. In March, he said, “Trump’s ICE agents need to be reined in and held to the same standards as any other law enforcement agency,” and “Federal accountability and clear identification shouldn’t be optional.”
That argument ran into the Trump administration’s counterclaim that a state cannot directly regulate federal operations. Federal officials sued over both bills and sought injunctions, and a federal judge also blocked California’s mask ban in February. State Democratic lawmakers then tried to rewrite that measure after the February ruling, but the 9th Circuit’s latest decision gives the administration another win in the fight.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called the ruling “another decisive victory in this administration’s effort to remove illegal a” while ICE defended agents concealing their identities during operations, saying rhetoric on the left had driven a spike in threats and assaults against agents’ families. The decision leaves California’s attempt to force federal agents to identify themselves in place no more, and it underscores how little room states have to dictate the terms of immigration enforcement once federal power and state law collide.
