Sacramento Border Patrol raid adds pressure for California Legislature to act
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Masked Border Patrol agents arrested 12 individuals at a Sacramento Home Depot.
- Senate Bills 805 and 627 push for agent identification and mask restrictions.
- Legislature faces urgency as lawmakers and caucuses call for fast-tracked votes.
The arrests of 12 people — including a U.S. citizen — by masked and armed Border Patrol agents at a Sacramento Home Depot on Thursday have added new urgency for state lawmakers to respond as the Central Valley and Northern California have been drawn into the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after previously escaping federal attention.
State Sens. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Alhambra, and Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, are carrying bills that would require federal agents to identify themselves and bar them from donning masks to obscure their faces when interacting with the public. Thursday’s raid has added new pressure for the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 805 and Senate Bill 627, as reports of masked, anonymous agents (and sometimes, self-deputized impostors) storming California neighborhoods in search of undocumented residents have proliferated in recent months. Until Thursday, immigration raids in California had largely been confined to the South State, where the Pentagon ordered national and federal troops to protect federal workers from mass protests.
At the federal level, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who was briefly handcuffed last month after confronting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has introduced legislation to the Senate Judiciary Committee to unmask officers and require visible identification. It’s unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, or the committee, which includes as a member Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch opponent of Padilla’s bill.
“I think it is really sad that after four years of open borders that resulted in vast numbers of criminal illegal aliens, murderers and rapists and Venezuelan gang members being released and committing violent crimes all across the country,” he told The Bee, “that today’s Democrats hate Donald Trump so much that rather than arrest and deport illegal aliens they want to harass and threaten federal agents.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that agents do routinely identify themselves.
They “verbally identify themselves as with ICE or Homeland Security, they wear vests that say ICE/ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) or Homeland Security (and) they are flanked by vehicles that also say the name of the department,” she tweeted last week.
That puts the onus on the Democratic-led state Legislature to act.
“It’s critical for California to step up and protect our residents against the terror and violence being inflicted upon them by ICE,” Wiener said. “Congress has been complicit in the creation of this fascist police state.”
Wiener and Renée Pérez’s bills have urgency clauses, which means they will go into effect immediately upon receiving a two-thirds vote from both the Senate and Assembly and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. The Legislature goes into recess next week, though the Latino and AAPI caucuses have asked Legislative leaders to fast track a spate of immigration bills, including SB 805 and SB 627, to act quickly, and a vote could come in a matter of weeks.
It’s unclear whether the governor, who has been feuding with Trump over immigration agents’ incursion into California, will support them. His office declined to comment on pending legislation, though they condemned Thursday’s raid in a statement.
“Trying to escape a court order stopping their reprehensible and illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests in L.A., Border Patrol came to Sacramento to spread more of their chaos and fear,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said. “They should do their jobs — at the border — instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests.”
Renée Pérez said she had updated but not yet met with the Governor’s Office to discuss her legislation. She has backing from several law enforcement agencies, including the Peace Officers Research Association of California, after the federal administration put local officers in an “odd position.”
“Many police chiefs report there’s been no coordination” or prior notice when federal authorities raid a community, she said. Their lack of transparency has created confusion, allowing impersonators posing as federal agents to stop school buses, detain a group of Latino men, and sexually assault a woman.
CBP notified the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office minutes after their agents raided the Home Depot lot, when witnesses had already called 911 to report seeing day laborers being arrested.
PORAC initially opposed SB 805 but agreed to back the bill after Renée Pérez said she amended it earlier this week to verify that local law agencies would be considered in compliance if they already had policies on masking and visible identification.
A spokesperson confirmed PORAC president Brian R. Marvel’s support for Renée Pérez’s bill. In a statement, he said the organization took issue with Wiener’s bill because it considered local law enforcement an “extension of the federal government,” and would ban officers from using personal protective equipment like face shields and gas masks.
He called for lawmakers to look to federal bills, as “California lacks the authority to regulate federal officers’ attire or operation, a fight better suited for Washington, D.C., where a bill has already been introduced to prevent ICE agents from concealing their identities. Our communities deserve both safe officers and transparent policing.”
The raid in Sacramento occurred the same day the Trump administration asked California sheriffs for information on immigration inmates, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum toured Alcatraz in San Francisco to announce plans to reopen the former federal prison as a detention center. The plan is almost certainly unlikely, given the site’s current status as a tourism destination and the exorbitant cost of renovation.
This story was originally published July 17, 2025 at 1:25 PM.
