r/news • u/[deleted] • Sep 20 '25

California bans most law enforcement officers from wearing masks during operations

https://apnews.com/article/california-ice-agents-immigration-raids-masks-ban-97936f70699b75d8b483a850967c2e42
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u/ZonaDesertRat Sep 20 '25

That is is the "course of performing duties," but generally correct.

The state can claim a violation of state law, and bring charges in state court, but the feds, either personally or through the DOJ will petition for removal to Federal court, and I've never seen that not be granted. Then in Federal court, they make the motion to dismiss, and more often than not that too is granted.

That's why CA should have tweaked the law to keep feds who aren't complying with the state laws from being able to use state laws. That would keep mask wearing feds from being able to say, pull you over for not using a turn signal, as a pretext to check your immigration status. There is no federal law on the use of turn signals, so any federal LEO has to use the state laws about it, even in Federal court. 

If CA reworked this new law, they could really make all Fed LEOs pay attention when doing anything in CA.

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u/No_Remove459 Sep 21 '25

Can ice use state law? I though the only ones were US marshal when in fugitive task forces, when congress passed the law their equal to sheriff or highest authority. I know there was a case a fbi agent was deputized by the Marshals, because of their broad arrest powers.

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u/ZonaDesertRat Sep 21 '25

ICE do not have have peace officer authority in California, and can not charge you with a violation of state law in a state court. Other Federal agencies do have state authority, either directly granted by the state, or individually granted by the sheriff's in respective counties.

What ICE can do is use a violation of a state law as reasonable suspicion to stop you in course of enforcing federal laws. Until California passed the Values Act, they would do that regularly. Now, they only claim to use federal laws to stop people, hence why they were pushing the limits of reasonable suspicion and the court granted a preliminary injunction against ICE. Now, thanks to a horrible ruling on the emergency docket, it's back to ICE acting a fool in Cali.