Tom Steyer, the 68-year-old billionaire and founder of Farallon Capital Management, released a five-point immigration plan this week that would direct California's attorney general to criminally prosecute federal immigration officers, use state funds to retrieve deported individuals from foreign countries, and ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings the governor's office disagrees with.
The plan, unveiled Tuesday as part of Steyer's campaign for California governor, amounts to the most aggressive anti-enforcement platform any major-state candidate has put forward, one that treats Immigration and Customs Enforcement not as a federal law-enforcement agency but as an organized crime syndicate.
Steyer said so himself, in terms that left little room for ambiguity. In a post on X, he wrote:
"'Wow' is right. ICE is a criminal organization. As governor, I'll prosecute them like one."
That post came in response to Elon Musk, who had reacted to the plan with a single word: "Wow."
Steyer's platform reads less like a gubernatorial policy paper and more like a litigation strategy against the federal government. He described it as a "comprehensive strategy that gives the State of California the power it needs to take on ICE and win."
The first plank would enforce existing California statutes against federal immigration officers for alleged racial profiling. Steyer claimed there is a "solid legal foundation for California to expand these protections and prosecute ICE agents for breaking the law."
The second would hand the state attorney general new authority to hold ICE leadership accountable. Steyer framed this as "supervisory liability":
"My plan will pursue supervisory liability. This body of law empowers the California justice system to criminally prosecute and imprison not just the ICE agents who are committing these crimes, but the leadership directing them to do so."
Third, Steyer pledged to create a special branch within the attorney general's office devoted to gathering "evidence" for prosecution of federal immigration officers. Fourth, he said he would spend state money to send representatives abroad and pay to fly deported individuals back into California. He characterized deportees as people who had been "detained and kidnapped by ICE" and vowed to "assist and help those who have been imprisoned without due process."
The fifth point is a statewide "Know Your Rights" public education campaign. Steyer described its scope in expansive terms:
"Every Californian, regardless of their immigration status, should know their constitutional and legal rights if you are stopped, detained, or questioned by ICE agents, if you are assembled to protest against ICE, if you are filming ICE agent activities, or if you witness unlawful and illegal actions perpetrated by ICE agents."
Taken together, the plan would turn California's law-enforcement apparatus into a weapon aimed squarely at the federal officers tasked with enforcing immigration law, while using taxpayer dollars to undo the results of lawful deportation proceedings.
Steyer leaned hard into the comparison between ICE and organized crime. He invoked Eliot Ness and the fictional detective Joe Friday as models for how California should approach federal immigration enforcement:
"As governor, I'll go after ICE the way Eliot Ness and Joe Friday went after the Mob: bring them to justice by using their most basic crimes against them. For the Mob it was racketeering; for ICE it's racial discrimination."
He also pledged to ignore rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court that conflict with his preferred immigration posture, a position that, if carried out, would place a state governor in open defiance of the constitutional order. Steyer framed this as California "taking matters into our own hands" because of "the federal government's failure."
The approach mirrors a pattern already visible in Philadelphia, where DA Larry Krasner has renewed threats to arrest ICE agents enforcing immigration law at the city's airport. What Steyer proposes would scale that posture to the largest state in the country, with an entire special branch of the attorney general's office dedicated to the effort.
Steyer's plan arrives at a moment when ICE operations across the country are already generating friction with Democratic officials. In San Francisco, an arrest at the international airport earlier this year drew intense attention. The Department of Homeland Security said the woman arrested was part of a Guatemalan family of illegal immigrants with removal orders dating back to 2019. DHS described the arrest as a targeted enforcement action, not a random sweep. The woman allegedly broke free and resisted arrest while being escorted away, the New York Post reported.
San Francisco International Airport spokesman Doug Yakel told the Post at the time: "We believe this is an isolated incident and have no reason to suspect broader enforcement action at SFO." The airport also clarified the arrest was unrelated to a separate plan to deploy ICE agents to help with airport security delays.
That distinction matters. Under Steyer's framework, even a targeted arrest of a fugitive with years-old removal orders would expose the arresting agents to state criminal prosecution, not for misconduct, but for doing their jobs.
The federal government has been expanding ICE's operational footprint, including deploying agents to U.S. airports. That expansion has drawn pushback from Democratic leaders at every level. But Steyer's proposal goes further than any sitting official has dared: it doesn't just resist federal enforcement or refuse cooperation. It would actively criminalize it.
Steyer frames his plan as an accountability measure, holding ICE agents and their supervisors responsible for alleged racial profiling and civil-rights violations. There are, in fact, real accountability questions surrounding federal immigration enforcement. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has mandated body cameras for federal immigration enforcement officers, a policy designed to protect both agents and the public through transparency.
And in at least one case in Minneapolis, two ICE agents came under investigation after their sworn statements were contradicted by evidence. Genuine misconduct should be investigated and punished through proper channels.
But Steyer's plan doesn't propose better oversight or stronger internal-affairs mechanisms. It proposes that a state government treat the entire federal immigration enforcement apparatus as a criminal enterprise and prosecute its agents under state law for carrying out federal policy. That is not accountability. It is nullification dressed in legal language.
The most striking element of Steyer's platform is not any single policy point. It is the open pledge to defy the Supreme Court. A governor who promises in advance to ignore the nation's highest court is not proposing a legal strategy. He is proposing a constitutional crisis, one that would force a direct confrontation between state and federal authority over who controls immigration enforcement.
Steyer described ICE's authority as "the linchpin that holds together the entire ICE machine" and said his plan targets agents' "ability to weaponize their authority as federal agents to engage in racial profiling and racial violence." He offered no specific evidence for these claims in his announcement. No case names. No statute numbers. No data on the frequency or nature of alleged violations.
What he offered instead was a promise: "On my watch, California will protect the most vulnerable and bring to justice those who break the law and brutalize our neighbors. We'll let ICE know: in California, you obey our laws and respect our residents, or you go to jail."
The Democratic field for California governor already includes Eric Swalwell. Steyer, a billionaire hedge-fund founder, is positioning himself as the candidate willing to go furthest in confronting the federal government on immigration. Whether California voters want their next governor spending state resources flying deported individuals back from foreign countries, individuals removed through federal legal proceedings, is a question the primary will eventually answer.
Meanwhile, the broader fight over DHS funding and ICE deployments continues in Washington, where Democrats have repeatedly blocked funding measures. Steyer's plan would add a new front to that fight, one waged not in Congress but in California courtrooms, with federal agents as defendants.
When a candidate for the nation's largest governorship promises to jail federal officers for enforcing the law, ignore the Supreme Court, and use taxpayer money to undo lawful deportations, the question isn't whether the plan is bold. It's whether anyone in California's political class still believes the law applies to them, too.
