SACRAMENTO — A week after a Minnesota woman was fatally shot by a federal immigration officer, California legislators moved forward a bill that would make it easier for people to sue federal agents if they believe their constitutional rights were violated.

A Senate committee passed Senate Bill 747 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), which would provide Californians with a stronger ability to take legal action against federal law enforcement agents over excessive use of force, unlawful home searches, interfering with a right to protest and other violations.

California law already allows such suits against state and local law enforcement officials.

Successful civil suits against federal officers over constitutional rights are less common.

Wiener, appearing before Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, said his bill has taken on new urgency in the wake of the death of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota, the 37-year-old mother of three who was shot while driving on a snowy Minneapolis street.

Good was shot by an agent in self-defense, said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who alleged that Good tried to use her car as a weapon to run over the immigration officer.

Good’s death outraged Democratic leaders across the country, who accuse federal officers of flouting laws in their efforts to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants. In New York, legislators are proposing legislation similar to the one proposed by Wiener that would allow state-level civil actions against federal officers.

George Retes Jr., a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who was kept in federal custody for three days in July, described his ordeal at Tuesday’s committee hearing, and how immigration officers swarmed him during a raid in Camarillo.

Retes, a contracted security guard at the farm that was raided, said he was brought to Port Hueneme Naval Base. Officials swabbed his cheek to obtain DNA, and then moved him to Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. He was not allowed to make a phone call or see an attorney, he said.

“I did not resist, I did not impede or assault any agent,” Retes said.”What happened to me that day was not a misunderstanding. It was a violation of the Constitution by the very people sworn to uphold it.”

He also accused Department of Homeland security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin of spreading false information about him to justify his detention. DHS said in a statement last year that Retes impeded their operation, which he denies.

Retes has filed a tort claim against the U.S. government, a process that is rarely successful, said his attorney, Anya Bidwell.

Lawsuits can also be brought through the Bivens doctrine, which refers to the 1971 Supreme Court ruling Bivens vs. Six Unknown Federal Agents that established that federal officials can be sued for monetary damages for constitutional violations. But in recent decades, the Supreme Court has repeatedly restricted the ability to sue under Bivens.

Wiener’s bill, if passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, would be retroactive to March 2025.

“We’ve had enough of this terror campaign in our communities by ICE,” said Wiener at a news conference before the hearing. “We need the rule of law and we need accountability.”

Weiner is running for the congressional seat held by former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

Representatives for law enforcement agencies appeared at Tuesday’s hearing to ask for amendments to ensure that the bill wouldn’t lead to weakened protections for state and local officials.

“We’re not opposed to the intent of the bill. We’re just concerned about the future and the unintended consequences for your California employees,” said David Mastagni, speaking on behalf of the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which represents more than 85,000 public safety members.

Wiener’s bill is the latest effort by the state Legislature to challenge President Trump’s immigration raids. Newsom last year signed legislation authored by Wiener that prohibits law enforcement officials, including federal immigration agents, from wearing masks, with some exceptions.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued last year to block the law, and a hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday.

Acknowledging that “we’ve been getting our butts kicked for years now by the Republicans on voter registration,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Tuesday announced the DNC will spend millions of dollars to get “back in the game.”

Martin said that the newly created “When We Count” initiative, which he described as the party’s “largest ever voter registration effort … will train hundreds of fellows throughout the country to register tens of thousands of new voters in communities across the country.”

The announcement by the DNC, in what Martin called an “all hands on deck moment,” comes in the wake of massive voter registration gains by Republicans in recent years and ahead of November’s midterms, when Democrats aim to win back majorities in the House and Senate and a whopping 36 states hold elections for governor.

“For too long, Democrats have ceded ground to Republicans on registering voters,” Martin pointed out. “Between 2020 and ’24 alone, our party lost a combined 2.1 million registered voters. Meanwhile, Republicans gained 2.4 million voters.”

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The latest example is North Carolina, where new State Board of Elections data indicated that Republicans officially surpassed Democrats in voter registration for the first time in the crucial southeastern battleground state’s history.

Martin said a key reason for the Democrats’ deficit is that “Republicans have invested heavily in targeted partisan registration” to mobilize and grow their base of voters.

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But he lamented that “on the left” voter registration for decades has largely been led by nonpartisan advocacy organizations and civic “which limits their ability to engage in partisan conversations about registering as a Democrat.”

Martin said the new effort “is going to require everyone,” including the national, state and local parties, as well as outside groups and political campaigns, “participating in this critical work.”

Pointing to the sweeping ballot box successes by President Donald Trump and the GOP in the 2024 elections, when Republicans won back the White House and Senate and held onto their House majority, Martin said “we can’t just assume that certain demographics, whether they be young voters, voters of color or otherwise, will automatically support the Democratic Party. We have to earn every registration so that we can earn every vote.”

The DNC’s seven-figure initiative, which Martin said would kick off in the western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, “puts our national party and local parties back in the game. When we count, we’ll begin to chip away at the Republican advantage as we prepare to organize everywhere and win everywhere in 2026.”

The DNC, as it ramps up to this year’s midterm elections, also faces a formidable fundraising deficit compared to the rival Republican National Committee (RNC).

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RNC Communications Director Zach Parkinson, pointing to the DNC’s campaign cash problems, charged in a statement to Fox News Digital that “Ken Martin has driven the DNC into debt, overseen anemic fundraising.”

“We at the RNC think he’s the perfect person to oversee Democrats voter registration efforts,” Parkinson added, in a shot at the DNC chair.

WASHINGTON — Twelve House Democrats who last year sued the Trump administration over a policy limiting congressional oversight of immigrant detention facilities returned to federal court Monday to challenge a second, new policy imposing further limits on such unannounced visits.

In December, those members of Congress won their lawsuit challenging a Department of Homeland Security policy from June that required a week’s notice from lawmakers before an oversight visit. Now they’re accusing Homeland Security of having “secretly reimposed” the requirement last week.

In a Jan. 8 memorandum, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that “Facility visit requests must be made a minimum of seven (7) calendar days in advance. Any requests to shorten that time must be approved by me.”

The lawmakers who challenged the policies are led by Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and include five members from California: Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) and Norma Torres (D-Pomona).

Last summer, as immigration raids spread through Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, many Democrats including those named in the lawsuit were denied entry to local detention facilities. Before then, unannounced inspections had been a common, long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.

“The duplicate notice policy is a transparent attempt by DHS to again subvert Congress’s will…and this Court’s stay of DHS’s oversight visit policy,” the plaintiffs wrote in a federal court motion Monday requesting an emergency hearing.

On Saturday, three days after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, three members of Congress from Minnesota attempted to conduct an oversight visit of an ICE facility near Minneapolis. They were denied access.

Afterward, lawyers for Homeland Security notified the lawmakers and the court of the new policy, according to the court filing.

In a joint statement, the plaintiffs wrote that “rather than complying with the law, the Department of Homeland Security is attempting to get around this order by re-imposing the same unlawful policy.”

“This is unacceptable,” they said. “Oversight is a core responsibility of Members of Congress, and a constitutional duty we do not take lightly. It is not something the executive branch can turn on or off at will.”

Congress has stipulated in yearly appropriations packages since 2020 that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”

That language formed the basis of the decision last month by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, who found that lawmakers cannot be denied entry for visits “unless and until” the government could show that no appropriations money was being used to operate detention facilities.

In her policy memorandum, Noem wrote that funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which supplied roughly $170 billion toward immigration and border enforcement, are not subject to the limitations of the yearly appropriations law.

“ICE must ensure that this policy is implemented and enforced exclusively with money appropriated by OBBBA,” Noem said.

Noem said the new policy is justified because unannounced visits pull ICE officers away from their normal duties. “Moreover, there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions,” she wrote.

The lawmakers, in the court filing, argued it’s clear that the new policy violates the law.

“It is practically impossible that the development, promulgation, communication, and implementation of this policy has been, and will be, accomplished — as required — without using a single dollar of annually appropriated funds,” they wrote.