We’ve been reporting on California’s AB 2624, dubbed by Republican Asm. Carl DeMaio as the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” which would criminalize posting even a photo of an employee or volunteer of a taxpayer-funded organization providing “immigration support services” – essentially making any investigative journalism targeting these groups illegal.
Authored by Asm. Mia Bonta, the wife of California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, the bill is sponsored by none other than the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the group RedState outed in June 2025 as providing significant support for that month’s anti-ICE riots.
In addition to their Marxist indoctrination groups and “fighting for immigrants’ rights,” CHIRLA spearheads anti-ICE Rapid Response Networks throughout California. As part of that network, participants post photos of ICE agents, the vehicles being used, and real-time locations of ICE raids/immigration enforcement efforts. This network is responsible for the violent response to an ICE raid at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, CA, last July.
DIVE DEEPER: Taxpayer-Funded Riots: Here’s What We Found When We Followed the Money in Los Angeles
Under AB 2624 (emphasis mine):
A person, business, or association shall not knowingly publicly post or publicly display, disclose, or distribute on the internet the personal information or image of any designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer, or other individuals residing at the same home address, with the intent to do either of the following:
(A) Incite a third person to cause imminent great bodily harm to the designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer identified in the posting or display, or to a coresident of that person, where the third person is likely to commit this harm.
(B) Threaten the designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer identified in the posting or display, or a coresident of that person, in a manner that places the person identified or the coresident in objectively reasonable fear for their personal safety.
Anyone posting someone’s personal information publicly or online with a clear and unequivocal intent to have that person harassed or attacked is in the wrong. But there’s a big difference between that and what Bonta and CHIRLA are pushing, and there’s no reason people working for “immigrant services” providers should have more protection than anyone else.
And it’s even worse when you understand that “personal information” includes their work address and “information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is capable of being associated with” that person, that “image” means “a photograph, video footage, sketch, or computer-generated image that provides a means to visually identify the person depicted, and that
“designated immigration support services” means “services provided to the immigrant population, including, but not limited to, legal representation, legal assistance, advocacy, case management, humanitarian relief, immigration resources, referrals, translation services, counseling services, and health care.”
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That means that simply by posting a photo of Angelica Salas, CHIRLA’s executive director, in my story here at RedState and linking to CHIRLA’s website, which has its office address, as I did last year, I could be fined $10,000 and sentenced to up to a year in county jail. Sure, they have to prove intent, but we all know that in Gavin Newsom’s California, the courts would easily find that a conservative journalist had intent.
And if Salas was physically attacked by someone after I posted her picture, I could be fined $50,000 and sentenced to up to a year in county jail.
A thread I posted last summer about Salas’ ties to several other California NGOs and her appointment to the state’s Racial Equity Commission, I posted a photo of her husband because he also receives sustenance from the NGO teat. Because he’s a “coresident” of Salas’ home, he also receives “victim” status under the bill.
At the same time, CHIRLA and its allies are fighting to have ICE agents unmasked and, through their LA Area Rapid Response Network, they broadcast agents’ locations in real-time to thousands of hungry activists.
The penalties don’t stop there.
The bill also allows “victims” of investigative journalism to pursue a civil suit and be awarded injunctive relief (i.e., a takedown order) plus attorneys’ fees and costs, and at least $4,000 in restitution without proving any actual damages.
True Purpose of AB 2624 Is to Codify Intimidation & Harassment
We know, though, that there are two true purposes for the bill: 1) to intimidate and silence investigative journalists, and 2) to provide legal cover for the harassment CHIRLA’s associates are already doling out to journalists who dare look into the organization’s finances or publicize its misdeeds.
For example, former Assembly candidate and Ventura County GOP 1st Vice-Chair Lori Mills. (Disclosure: Mills and I have been close friends since 2019.) Mills, her son, and independent journalist Cam Higby went to CHIRLA’s offices on February 25, 2026, to ask questions. They were filming in the public area outside the building and were harassed and threatened by employees.
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As you can see in the video, CHIRLA’s building is already quite secure, and despite taking in nearly $26 million in taxpayer dollars in 2024 (out of $30 million total revenue), they don’t want outsiders to even enter the lobby.
Mills barely had enough time to get home to Simi Valley (more than an hour’s drive from downtown Los Angeles) when the Conejo Valley Antifascists, a group whose membership overlaps with CHIRLA volunteers, had put out an alert with their photos.
Mills has been on the receiving end of stalking, doxxing, and threats from leftists since she started speaking up about sexual content in California’s schools in 2019, but that increased as she ran for the California Assembly and started a podcast focused on exposing fraud and corruption in California. She’s had photos of her home posted online, been screamed at in public by leftists filming her and looking for a reaction, and had to file numerous police reports related to violent threats.
Indivisible, CHIRLA, VC Defensa show up to Simi to push the Soros agenda.
We met them. Things got so heated they cleared the room.
We are back in session now. pic.twitter.com/Wb82pyeKhF— Lori Mills (@LoriMills4CA42) July 22, 2025
But she’s not protected by AB 2624; her harassers are. And for her trouble, if AB 2624 was in effect that day, she could have been subjected to a year in jail plus $14 million in fines, plus her own legal fees.
I have my own story to tell (and will tell it in an upcoming installment of this series) about being threatened and harassed as a result of my reporting on CHIRLA; those threats are the main reason I have been living in exile in Nevada since last summer.
At this time, AB 2624 is still in committee in the California State Assembly; it is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Public Safety Committee (whose chair, Asm. Isaac Bryan, is a co-sponsor of the bill) on Tuesday morning.
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