Bill requiring California AG to investigate federal agent shootings advances
The California Attorney General could soon be required to investigate when federal immigration agents shoot someone in the state, issue a public report on the agency’s findings and if warranted file criminal charges against the officers.
On Tuesday, the Assembly Public Safety Committee voted 7-2 along party lines to advance the bill. Committee Chairman Nick Shultz, D-Burbank, a former Deputy Attorney General, cheered Gabriel’s proposal and said that within the California Department of Justice are “some of the very best and brightest in the state of California, more than capable of doing this job.”
If passed, the bill could put Attorney General Rob Bonta into new legal territory. Though Bonta has expressed a willingness to prosecute federal agents if they break state law while conducting immigration enforcement, bringing criminal charges against law enforcement officers at any level when they shoot someone while on duty has historically been challenging for prosecutors. For the state to prosecute a federal agent raises even more challenging questions of law, California legislative analysts said in an April 20 report on the bill.
Federal officers operate under a “relatively permissive federal immunity standard,” the analysts wrote. “However, unjustified and unreasonable shootings, or shootings that occur outside the scope of an immigration officer’s duties, may be subject to successful AG prosecution.”
Federal immigration agents have fatally shot one person and wounded three others in the state during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet that is tracking violence amid the administration’s deportation crackdown.
Earlier this month, immigration agents shot 36-year-old Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez seven times following a targeted traffic stop in Stanislaus County. Federal officials have argued Mendoza Hernandez attempted to run agents over as he tried to flee and have leveled a felony charge of assault of a federal officer with a deadly weapon (his car) against him. But Mendoza Hernandez’s family, and a federal public defender, contest that description of events and say the agents broke their own protocol during the stop.
California DOJ officials have told The Sacramento Bee they have been in touch with both the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has taken over that case, and the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office, which assisted the FBI, since that incident occurred. But the DOJ officials have declined to say whether the agency is investigating the shooting for possible lawbreaking by the federal agents.
Under Gabriel’s bill, the agency would be required to investigate that shooting.
Supporters of the measure include immigrant rights groups, criminal justice reform organizations and SEIU California, one of the state’s larger labor unions. No groups have come out in opposition to the bill.
Notably, the legislation does not appear to have any impact on state and federal law enforcement. Associations representing police departments and sheriff’s offices have opposed other measures in California Democrats’ wide-ranging pushback against Trump’s immigration enforcement push, when those bills regulate their members alongside U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcment and Customs and Border Patrol officers.
Bonta has not publicly weighed in on Gabriel’s measure. In late January, however, after lCE and CBP agents shot and killed two Minneapolis protesters — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an advisory to California law enforcement leaders reminding them the state had the authority to prosecute federal officers under state laws.
“California stands ready to take all necessary steps to investigate potentially unlawful conduct by federal agents that occurs on our soil, and where the facts warrant, file charges for violations of the California Penal Code,” Bonta said in a statement at the time. “Let there be no question: State and local law enforcement in California have authority to investigate potential violations of state law, even when those violations are committed by federal agents.”
But the practicality of investigating federal officers, if Gabriel’s bill becomes law, could prove challenging.
It is extremely rare for prosecutors to bring charges against law enforcement officers who shoot someone while on duty at any level of government, and convictions in those cases are even rarer. A state agency prosecuting a federal officer could be even more challenging
Since 2021, Bonta’s office has been required to investigate shootings by California law enforcement officers in cases where the person killed was unarmed. Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty sponsored that 2021 bill when he was an assemblymember. He has previously said the unarmed qualification was a compromise necessary to gain majority support for the measure.
Bonta’s office has completed 39 investigations into officer-involved shootings at the state and local level since 2021, and there are 56 investigations ongoing. None of the completed investigations have resulted in charges being filed against the officers, according to a review of the department’s website.
The pace of California DOJ’s investigationsinto local shootings have drawn criticism. Slow investigations have led the families of some people killed by the police to ask the attorney general’s office to conclude or drop their cases, CalMatters reported in May 2023, because the long state investigations have complicated efforts to bring civil lawsuits against the officers and agencies involved.
Bonta has previously told the Legislature he needs more resources to conduct the officer-involved shooting investigations that fall in his bailiwick today. It’s not clear if he’d seek additional funding were he asked to also investigate shootings by federal immigration officers in the state. Legislative analysts described the fiscal impacts of Gabriel’s bill as “unknown,” and Bonta’s press team did not respond to questions sent by The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.
Gabriel has been in “really robust and helpful conversations” with California DOJ officials about his bill, the lawmaker told a Bee reporter on Tuesday. “What I’d say is resources are always part of the conversation,” he said.
