SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California Assembly committee on Wednesday advanced a ban on law enforcement officers from coming near polling places unless they’re responding to a public safety threat — a bill supporters say is designed to insulate the state’s elections from intimidation tactics by federal agencies under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The bill would make it a felony for anyone wearing insignia or a uniform for any state, local or federal agency to come within the “immediate vicinity” of a polling place. Assemblymember Anamarie Avila Farias, D-Martinez, introduced the measure out of concern U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents could hit the streets on election day to ensure only citizens are voting — and in doing so, intimidate California’s large legal immigrant population away from ballot boxes.

Republicans, and in particular Trump, have for years falsely suggested undocumented immigrants were voting in large numbers in American elections. Some Trump administration officials, however, have dismissed the idea of sending ICE agents to polling places. Federal law has long held that election interference by federal officers, and specifically deploying troops or armed agents during an election, are illegal, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

But lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing indicated such laws gave them cold comfort during Trump’s emboldened second term. Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, recalled when notorious ICE commander Gregory Bovino and a group of agents stood outside the location of a rally Gov. Gavin Newsom hosted in Los Angeles to push the redistricting measure, Proposition 50.

“The idea that this president would not send ICE agents to intimidate legitimate voters at polling places is laughable,” Berman said. “This president will do whatever he possibly can to hold on to power.”

(The Trump administration sidelined Bovino amid the backlash over federal agents’ killing of two civilians in Minneapolis, and he has since retired from ICE.)

The bill separately bans ICE agents from stationing themselves near child care centers while performing immigration enforcement.

The committee’s two Republicans opposed the measure. During a back-and-forth with his Democratic colleagues that quickly turned testy, Assemblymember James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, questioned the state’s authority to regulate the actions of federal officers and said the Legislature continues to bring bills it can not enforce against ICE agents.

“Have they successfully prosecuted a federal law enforcement officer, the state Department of Justice?” Gallagher asked at one point. Though Gallagher did not get an answer in the committee hearing, there hasn’t been any public case where the state has prosecuted a federal officer for enforcement actions taken during the second Trump administration, though state leaders have said they have the authority to do so if agents break state law.

Legal experts say the state has latitude to prohibit certain actions by federal agents but that such measures are largely novel questions of law and will face court challenges from the Trump administration.

In one example of the Legislature’s navigating new territory, on Tuesday the Senate Public Safety Committee advanced a bill that takes last year’s ban on federal agents wearing face masks during operations and expands it to state and local law enforcement officers. That is the Legislature’s answer to a federal judge’s ruling that last year’s mask ban was discriminatory because it applied only to federal agents.

Associations for California police departments and sheriff offices have been consistent skeptics of legislation that may be aimed at ICE but winds up putting restrictions on state and local officers.

Avila Farias’ election bill applies its ban on uniformed officers near polling places to state and local law enforcement as well as federal agents, a step she said was necessary after the judge’s ruling on the mask ban. Her bill did not face any opposition from law enforcement associations on Wednesday.

A broad effort aimed at ICE

Across the capitol this month, Democratic-led committees were advancing bills aimed at blunting the federal immigration crackdown over the objections of outnumbered Republican lawmakers. The Assembly Judiciary Committee voted 9-3 to advance a bill blocking state grants or tax credits from going to private prison companies that hold contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to CalMatters’ AI-powered Digital Democracy tool.

Last week that committee advanced a bill that would ban ICE agents from staging enforcement operations on state property.

In the aftermath of the ICE killings in Minneapolis, both Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Monique Limon called for Democratic lawmakers nationally and at the state level to push reforms on DHS. The outstanding question, as the legislative session heats up, is how much appetite Democratic leadership including Newsom will have for bills that may be on shakier legal ground or draw political backlash as an overreaction to ICE, even amid the broad unpopularity of the agency’s tactics, and whether there will be an effort to consolidate lawmaker support behind select bills or allow the current free-for-all to continue.

On Tuesday, lawmakers from the Latino Caucus said they planned to soon meet with Gov. Gavin Newsom about their own legislative priorities, which include at least five measures designed to protect the state’s immigrants amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented people nationwide.

Among them were bills to restrict the use of flash-bang grenades and explosive breaching charges for crowd control and for immigration enforcement and a bill prohibiting ICE agents from arresting people on their way to a court proceeding.

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