California Gov. Gavin Newsom: “ICE has become the president’s personal, lawless police force”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused Donald Trump of turning Immigration and Customs Enforcement into his “personal, lawless police force,” escalating a public confrontation with the president over the role of federal immigration agents.

Newsom’s criticism followed a late-March 2026 order deploying hundreds of ICE officers at U.S. airport terminals. The Trump administration said the agents would assist the Transportation Security Administration during a prolonged partial federal government shutdown that had created serious staffing problems at the agency.

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ICE has become the president’s personal, lawless and poorly trained police force, deployed to serve his agenda, not the law.

Newsom’s press office responded on X that ICE had become “the president’s personal, lawless and poorly trained police force, deployed to serve his agenda, not the law.” The California governor continued his criticism online, demanding clear limits on the conduct of federal agents and arguing that federal agencies should be held to the same legal standards as local police departments.

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The ICE agents under Trump need to be controlled and held to the same standards as every other law enforcement agency.

“The ICE agents under Trump need to be controlled and held to the same standards as every other law enforcement agency,” Newsom wrote. He later added that “federal accountability and clear identification should not be optional.”

The dispute reached a sharper point in July after new documents from a district court were made public. In a July 29 statement, Newsom accused the Trump administration of directing a campaign of political persecution from the White House and of using federal immigration officers as a partisan propaganda weapon in California.

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Federal accountability and clear identification should not be optional.