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"ICE, unmask — what are you afraid of?" California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked before signing the "No Secret Police Act," a reckless state law ordering federal immigration agents to remove face coverings during operations. But it's Newsom who should be afraid, considering the shaky legal ground he's on.
SB 627 bans federal and local law enforcement officers from wearing "ski masks and similar extreme masking" and imposes civil and criminal penalties on officers who violate the new law. Its real effect is to expose them to doxxing, harassment, and potentially violent reprisals on the job and at their homes.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has already said it will not comply, and rightly so. California cannot regulate the federal government's actions in enforcing federal immigration law, much less any other federal law.
The Constitution is explicit. Article VI's Supremacy Clause declares the "laws of the United States" to be the "supreme Law of the Land." California has no authority to strip federal officers of their lawful protections and is barred from prosecuting federal law enforcement agents who are enforcing federal law.
Newsom and the oblivious state legislators who sponsored this legislative mess might want to reread the seminal Supreme Court decision In re Neagle (1890), when the court rebuked California for trying to prosecute a U.S. marshal who defended Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field from an armed attacker who tried to assassinate Field.
Who was the attacker that Marshall David Neagle shot at a railway station in the San Joaquin Valley? It was David Terry, the former chief justice of California's state supreme court. Known for his violent temper, Terry apparently had a grudge against Field over a court decision involving Terry's wife. Sounds like an unbelievable plot created by Hollywood script writers, but it actually happened.
The court held then, as it holds now, that federal officers carrying out their federal duties are immune from state prosecution and state interference in the carrying out of those duties. But it seems like California hasn't learned its lesson, doesn't it?
By demanding that federal officers be unmasked, Newsom has painted a target on their backs. Just days after he signed the law, a radical gunman opened fire on an ICE field office in Dallas, killing two detainees and injuring another before taking his own life. Recovered bullets were inscribed with the words "ANTI-ICE."
This was not an isolated episode. Attacks on ICE agents have surged over 1,000% this year. We have seen an armed attempt to storm a Texas ICE facility on Independence Day; a firebombing attempt in Portland, Oregon; a Border Patrol shooting in Texas that wounded two agents; and destructive riots in Los Angeles.
Yet Newsom mocked federal agents with his "What are you afraid of?" taunt. But what California has done is no joke. The message from Newsom and the Democrat-dominated legislature is clear: stop deporting illegal aliens, or face mob justice and violence.
While Democrats claim to defend the rule of law, Newsom and his Democrat legislative colleagues are empowering violent extremists to resist and obstruct the law, and to attack federal agents who are doing their jobs.
Federal agents have the right and duty to protect themselves and their families. These dedicated public servants will not be stopped from deporting the thousands of illegal aliens, many of them criminals, released into California by the Biden administration with Newsom's approval and support. Nor will they be demoralized by unconstitutional state edicts designed to leave them and their families exposed to violence.
If Democrats like Newsom and, for that matter, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, are truly serious about wanting to "lower the temperature," they should end their defiance of federal law and the hidden threats, instead of embracing and instigating chaos, violence, and anarchy.
They couldn't prosecute U.S. Marshall David Neagle in 1890 for protecting a Supreme Court justice. And they can't prosecute federal agents today for protecting themselves and their families.
Reread the Neagle case, Gov. Newsom. What are you afraid of?
Hans von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation and the host of the "Case in Point" podcast.
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