Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Aug. 22 that hands immigration nonprofit workers a government shield from public scrutiny — and slaps steep penalties on anyone who posts their image or personal details with the wrong intent. The message from Sacramento: protect the comfortable, punish the honest.
Assembly Bill 2624 adds employees and volunteers of immigration nonprofits to California's Safe at Home program, which provides substitute mailing addresses to keep home locations off public records. The program already covers domestic violence survivors, elder abuse victims, and reproductive and gender-affirming care workers. Now it covers the people running the immigration services industry — and the teeth in this law are real.
Under the new statute, anyone who posts a covered worker's image or personal details to incite violence faces damages starting at $4,000 with no cap, plus court costs. Posting with intent that someone commit a violent crime brings fines up to $10,000 and a year in jail. If the post leads to injury, it becomes a felony punishable by up to $50,000. The bill text carves out an exemption for journalists shielded under state evidence law — a carve-out that critics say is cold comfort when the law's chilling effect does the work before any reporter reaches a courtroom.
Democratic Assemblywoman Mia Bonta of Alameda introduced the bill in February. "Our immigrant service providers are living in fear because of extremists looking to demonize the work that they do and the populations they serve," Bonta said Saturday. "That is an intolerable consequence of the anti-immigrant rhetoric that exists right now."
Republicans call it the "Stop Nick Shirley Act" — a nickname coined by Assemblyman Carl DeMaio of San Diego. Shirley is an independent journalist and YouTuber whose videos have followed immigrant workers and accused them of fraud in California and Minnesota. Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody branded it the "Protect Fraudsters Act." Newsom himself said in February that Somali daycare providers in Minnesota were "under siege" following Shirley's arrival there, according to the New York Post.
The timing of the signing rubbed salt in the wound. Days before Newsom's pen hit paper, Shirley was conducting a sidewalk interview outside the California State Capitol when Terry Schanz — chief of staff to Democratic Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor — crashed the encounter holding a printed flyer. "Did you guys hear that Nick Shirley has a small penis allegedly?" Schanz asked. Schanz earns $207,828 a year in taxpayer-funded compensation. Multiple complaints have since reached the Legislature's HR department, KCRA reported. Schanz's name also surfaced in a 2025 wrongful-termination lawsuit alleging political bullying and a toxic workplace culture within top Assembly leadership, the Post noted.
The Daily Caller framed the law as a shield that "doubles as a muzzle for the reporters chasing them." The Post led with Schanz's confrontation and called him a "radical left-wing operative." Both outlets agree on the core facts: a law designed to protect immigration workers from harassment was signed by a governor whose own party's staff was caught harassing a journalist on the Capitol sidewalk.
The law takes effect Oct. 1, 2027 — giving California's immigration services industry a long runway and independent journalists a clear warning. The question isn't whether Sacramento can write the law. It's whether a state that can't keep its streets safe or its residents from fleeing can find the time and money to protect its own from the people shining light on what they do.
