AB 2624 HEADS TO THE GOVERNOR AS ONE OF THE LEGISLATURE’S MOST CONSIDERED BILLS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Assembly Bill 2624, authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), is headed to the Governor floor after clearing six policy committees, two fiscal committees, and full Assembly and Senate floor votes. Over the course of the past year it has survived a coordinated right-wing misinformation campaign that had little to do with the bill's actual text.

"This bill has gone through the process: six committees, two fiscal reviews, floor votes, and at every step, the facts have held up," said Assemblymember Mia Bonta. "Meanwhile right-wing agitators, ineffective legislators, and Trump loyalists are still scrambling to finalize their campaign against it, which was never really about this bill. It's about making people think twice before standing up for their immigrant neighbors."

Earlier this year on the Assembly floor, a Republican Assemblymember who has never had a bill signed into law in the Legislature, tried repeated separate procedural motions to stop AB 2624 before it reached a floor vote: a motion under Assembly Rule 96 to send the bill back to the Privacy Committee, a motion under Rule 98 to strike it from the file, and a motion under Rule 97 to withdraw it from committee altogether. Each attempt failed.

THE CONTEXT

The bill was introduced in direct response to a documented escalation of threats against immigration service workers across the state of California. Testimony before the Assembly Privacy Committee included the following account from Angelica Salas, Executive Director of CHIRLA:

"We received a lot of hate calls, a lot of threats of violence against our organization… I'm personally named consistently, and the threats of violence are extreme… Our staff, just recently, going out to lunch, had people outside asking for their names, asking them questions, really attacking their ability to move from one place to another, trying to get into our office. It happened to me and happened to a family member. They were looking for me and ended up in my mother's home. There's so many of my colleagues where individuals have shown up to their home, who have been threatened, and this is not just our organization, but many others."

THE RECORD

AB 2624 has been reviewed and passed by the: ○Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, ○Assembly Judiciary Committee, ○Assembly Public Safety Committee, ○Assembly Appropriations Committee, ○Assembly Floor, ○Senate Privacy, Digital Technology and Consumer Protection Committee, ○Senate Judiciary Committee, ○Senate Public Safety Committee, ○Senate Appropriations Committee, ○Senate Floor, and ○Assembly Floor - Concurrence.

It now heads to the Governor's desk. AB 2624 is a 2026 California Legislative Latino Caucus Priority bill and is included in the Assembly Democrats' 2026 package of legislation holding the Trump administration and ICE accountable for its treatment of immigrant communities.

WHAT THE OPPOSITION CAMPAIGN HAS ACTUALLY BEEN ABOUT

No news media organization has opposed AB 2624. Independent fact-checks, including Snopes, have found no basis in the bill's text for the claims driving the opposition. Despite grandstanding on the bill Nick Shirley has dodged on-the-record interview requests to discuss it.

What the record does show is a campaign built on three things that have nothing to do with the bill itself:

• Fundraising: The "Stop Nick Shirley Act" branding, the viral video campaigns, and the Capitol confrontations have been designed to drive traffic and donations to the political operations behind them and have not been based on scrutiny of the bill's language.
• Making solidarity feel costly: The goal of flooding legislators' offices with threats and harassment is to make supporting immigrant communities feel politically dangerous enough that the next lawmaker, or the next nonprofit, decides it isn't worth it.
• Villainizing immigrants and the people who serve them: The campaign against this bill attempts to dismiss the documented threats and violence facing nonprofit caseworkers, legal aid attorneys, and volunteers and rather paint them as the story's villains.

THE FACTS

AB 2624 does not restrict filming in public, does not prohibit investigative journalism, does not modify public records law for organizations, and does not apply to anyone who hasn't voluntarily enrolled in and been certified by the Safe at Home program. It extends a 28-year-old, court-tested confidentiality program to people who are being followed home and threatened for helping their neighbors.

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Assemblymember Mia Bontarepresents California's 18^th Assembly District encompassing the East Bay including Oakland, Alameda, and Emeryville. She also serves as chair of the Assembly Health Committee and the California Legislative Children's Caucus.

Courtesy photos can be found HERE.