By January 1, 2027, every state and local agency in California must have a written policy governing how its staff respond when immigration officers arrive at the counter, ask for a file, or serve a subpoena. The Attorney General published the model in July. Most governing boards have four or five regular meetings left in which to act on it.
Senate Bill 580 (Durazo; Stats. 2025, ch. 670), signed October 12, 2025, added section 12532.5 to the Government Code. The section is short. It directed the Attorney General to publish, by July 1, 2026, "model policies for state and local agencies relating to interaction with immigration authorities consistent with federal and state law," together with "guidance, audit criteria, and training recommendations" for the databases those agencies run or have vendors run for them. And it set a deadline for everyone else: "On or before January 1, 2027, a state or local agency shall implement the model policy or an equivalent policy."
The Attorney General met his half of the schedule. Promoting Safe and Secure Government Access for All, dated July 2026, runs to sixty pages: a chapter on the legal framework, a chapter of model policies on physical access to agency facilities, a chapter of model policies on demands for information, a chapter of database guidance and audit criteria, and an appendix reproducing the federal forms an agency is likely to see. What follows is what the statute requires, what the model policies say, where the guidance leaves questions open, and what an agency should be doing between now and the end of the year.
What the statute itself requires
Section 12532.5 does three things and is silent on a fourth.
It requires the Attorney General to publish model policies and database guidance, both by July 1, 2026, after consulting "appropriate stakeholders." It exempts what the Attorney General publishes from the Administrative Procedure Act, so the guidance took effect on publication with no rulemaking record and no formal comment period. And it requires each state and local agency to "implement the model policy or an equivalent policy" by January 1, 2027.
The bill's findings declare the subject a matter of statewide concern rather than a municipal affair, so the section reaches charter cities. And because it imposes a new duty on local agencies, the bill acknowledges a state-mandated local program and provides for reimbursement through the Commission on State Mandates if the Commission finds reimbursable costs.
What the section does not do is define "state or local agency," say what makes a policy "equivalent," or provide any enforcement mechanism, penalty, or reporting requirement. The Attorney General's guidance reads the coverage broadly ("SB 580 applies to all state and local agencies in California, unless otherwise exempt under California law"), and that is the safe reading for any city, county, special district, joint powers authority, or school or community college district that receives the public or holds records about it. Agencies already covered by the Values Act (SB 54) or by the sector-specific model policies the Attorney General issued earlier for schools, libraries, courts, health facilities and shelters are told to consult those as well; the new guidance supplements them rather than replacing them.
The five principles the model policies are built on
The guidance opens with five principles that run through everything after it. Agency resources should not be used to assist immigration enforcement except as state or federal law requires. Agencies should limit what they collect, keep and disclose that could identify or locate a person without lawful status, unless the law or the lawful administration of a program requires it. Where there is no legal obligation to comply with a request, agencies should require judicial process, meaning a judicial warrant, judicial subpoena or court order, before complying. Every request should be routed to designated staff or counsel trained to evaluate it. And every interaction should be documented.
Two framing points in the guidance matter for how a policy is written and defended. First, "immigration authorities" means any law enforcement agency enforcing immigration law, federal or otherwise, so a policy keyed to ICE and CBP by name is too narrow. Second, the guidance is explicit that nothing in it directs staff to obstruct federal officers acting within their authority, to provide false information, to conceal anyone, or to interfere physically with an arrest. A policy that reads as a direction to resist is not what the Attorney General published, and an agency that adopts one has gone past the model rather than implemented it.
Chapter 2: immigration officers at the door
The first set of model policies governs physical access. The organizing distinction is between public and nonpublic areas of a facility, and the guidance asks each agency to draw that line in writing for its own buildings.
A public area is one the general public is normally free to enter without escort, appointment or authorization: lobbies, counters, waiting rooms, hearing rooms open to spectators, visitor parking. Immigration officers may be present there, and their presence does not expand their authority. A nonpublic area is everything the public is not normally free to enter, whether or not it is locked or marked: staff offices, break rooms, records and server rooms, interview rooms, employee corridors and parking, and a consultation booth in an otherwise public space where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. The guidance ties this to the Fourth Amendment cases on commercial premises and to the Immigrant Worker Protection Act (AB 450; Gov. Code, §§ 7285.1, 7285.2), which already prohibits an employer, public or private, from giving voluntary consent to an immigration agent's entry into nonpublic areas of a workplace, or to access to employee records, without a judicial warrant or subpoena.
The core of the chapter is a sorting rule for documents, with samples of each in the appendices:
A Notice to Appear (Form I-862) is the charging document in a removal case. It is signed by an immigration officer, not a judge, and confers no authority to enter nonpublic areas or to require anything of the agency.
An administrative warrant (Form I-200 or I-205) is issued by DHS and signed by an immigration officer, with no court seal or case number. It authorizes federal officers to arrest the person named. It does not authorize entry into nonpublic areas, and it does not require the agency to assist, to confirm the person is present, or to provide information.
A judicial warrant (Forms AO 93 and AO 442) is signed by a judge or magistrate judge, names the issuing court, references a criminal proceeding and specifies the person or the place. The agency should not interfere, should notify counsel at once, should ask the officer to wait in a public area while counsel confirms the warrant is judicial and the location matches, and should comply to the warrant's scope and no further.
The model policy itself, which the guidance sets out in a form an agency can adopt, requires the following. Staff stay calm, ask for identification and copies of any documents, and immediately notify designated personnel or counsel. Staff do not consent to entry into nonpublic areas, do not identify people or confirm anyone's presence, do not provide interpretation or logistical help, and do not read a document as requiring compliance; those determinations belong to the designee. Staff do not provide false information, destroy records, conceal anyone, or interfere. If an officer presses past a refusal, staff do not block the door; they call counsel, security or a supervisor and document what happened. Each agency designates counsel or trained staff with authority to speak for it, and may route all contact through a single entry point. And every interaction is recorded in a central file: date, time, location, officers' names and agencies, the documents presented and whether a judge signed them, the areas sought, what staff said and did, and how it ended.
Chapter 3: demands for information
The second set of model policies governs requests for records and data, which the guidance treats as the larger exposure. The sorting rule is the same in shape:
An informal request, by phone, email, letter or in person, creates no obligation to respond. Staff tell the requester that agency policy requires review by the designee, refer it, and document it. The guidance recommends insisting that requests be put in writing.
An administrative subpoena (Form I-138), issued under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(d)(4) and signed by an agency official, is not self-executing. The model response is to refer it to counsel and take no action unless counsel directs otherwise. The guidance notes the Ninth Circuit's holding in Peters v. United States (9th Cir. 1988) 853 F.2d 692 that the statute does not authorize "John Doe" subpoenas for records about a group of unidentified people, and a 2026 district court ruling, now on appeal, that it reads as denying enforcement of such subpoenas against state agencies. An agency served with a petition to enforce is told to contact the Attorney General's office.
A judicial subpoena carries legal force but can be challenged. Counsel evaluates scope and validity, decides whether to move to quash, and limits any production to what is required.
A court order must be obeyed to its terms, and no further.
A Public Records Act request from an immigration authority is handled exactly as one from anyone else: the Act is purpose-neutral, the same exemptions apply, and the requester's identity earns no additional access.
Two more sections of the chapter deserve a careful read by any agency that takes federal money. The first addresses funding conditions: the guidance tells agencies to review grant agreements, notices of funding opportunity and certification language for immigration-related conditions, to evaluate whether a condition is authorized by statute, and not to assume compliance is required because the condition appears in a grant document. The second addresses regulatory data access, the ongoing feeds into federal program systems. It uses two examples: the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' sharing of state Medicaid data with ICE, and the Department of Agriculture's demands for five years of SNAP applicant data, both the subject of litigation in which California obtained preliminary injunctions. The point for an agency is that data submitted to a federal program system for one purpose may be available for another, so each reporting obligation should be checked against the statute and regulation that create it, de-identified or narrowed where the law allows, and documented.
On 8 U.S.C. § 1373, the federal statute that bars restricting the exchange of information about citizenship or immigration status, the guidance takes the position the Ninth Circuit has taken: the statute reaches status information only, not addresses, locations, photographs or release dates, and it requires no agency to respond to any request. The model policies are written to stay inside it, and the guidance says so. An agency should say the same thing in its own policy.
The chapter's model policy adds requirements on the collection side that go beyond responding to requests. An agency does not ask about immigration or citizenship status, its own clients' or their household members', unless a state or federal law or program requires it, and does not demand documents that reveal status, such as a passport or green card, to the exclusion of other acceptable identification. It collects only the personal information its programs or the law require, keeps it only as long as necessary under a written retention schedule, and has a secure deletion method. It restricts access by role, including for files held off-site or by vendors. And it appends the policy to vendor contracts and memoranda of understanding so that contractors are bound by the same limits.
Chapter 4: databases, vendors and audits
The database chapter is framed differently from the two before it. The statute requires agencies to implement the model policies; the database material is "guidance, audit criteria, and training recommendations," and the Attorney General "encourages" agencies to adopt it. That said, an agency defending the adequacy of its policy will find it hard to explain why it ignored the Attorney General's audit criteria for the records the policy is meant to protect. The chapter asks for:
Data minimization, field by field. Information not collected cannot be disclosed. The guidance singles out "proxy data," fields such as place of birth, documentation type, language, household composition and identification numbers that permit inferences about status in combination, and asks whether each is necessary.
Retention limits that routinely delete or anonymize data once it is no longer needed and prevent legacy datasets from accumulating.
Access controls built on least privilege, need to know, separation of duties and individual accountability, extended to contractors, interns and volunteers, with access conditioned on privacy training and supervisor approval.
Vendor contract terms that prohibit unauthorized access or disclosure, require agency consent before any disclosure, require prompt notice to the agency if agency data is subpoenaed, and have the vendor acknowledge that access is for performance of the contract only and that redisclosure is barred without written consent unless the law expressly requires it. The guidance cites Civil Code section 1798.17 for the proposition that contractors must maintain security equivalent to the agency's.
Elevated scrutiny for bulk or blanket requests, which the guidance's training example tells an agency to treat as "extraordinary and presumptively overbroad and unlawful."
Data-sharing agreements for interagency and interoperable systems that prohibit use of agency data for immigration enforcement absent legal authority.
AI usage policies, reviewed at least twice a year, with audit review of outlier queries.
Recurring audits that examine collection practices, require and review complete access logs (user, record, time, action, with attention to bulk exports and repeated searches on sensitive populations), document incidents of suspected misuse, and run a complaint and corrective-action process with written findings.
Where the guidance leaves questions open
"Equivalent" is undefined. The statute lets an agency implement "the model policy or an equivalent policy," and neither it nor the guidance says what equivalence requires. The practical test is likely to be functional: does the agency's policy produce the same five outcomes the guidance is built on? An agency that already has an AB 450 policy, a Values Act policy, or a records policy that routes law enforcement requests to counsel has a head start, but each of those is narrower than the model, and a 2018-vintage policy will not cover the database chapter, the documentation lists, the vendor terms or the federal-program review at all. The safer course is a single new policy that tracks the model's structure and incorporates the older ones by reference.
There is no enforcement clause. Section 12532.5 provides no penalty for missing the deadline, no certification to the Attorney General, and no private right of action. That does not make the deadline advisory. The Attorney General has used his supervisory authority over local law enforcement to police Values Act compliance, and nothing prevents a mandamus petition by a resident or an advocacy group to compel an agency to do what the statute says it "shall" do. More practically, a policy's absence will be the first exhibit in any litigation over an incident at a facility, and an agency without one is the agency whose frontline staff are left making the legal determinations the guidance says they should never make. The exposure is in the incident, not the deadline.
The mandate is reimbursable only if claimed, and the first window is already running. The bill names the Commission on State Mandates process. A test claim must be filed within twelve months of the statute's effective date or within twelve months of first incurring costs under it, whichever is later (Gov. Code, § 17551, subd. (c)). SB 580 took effect January 1, 2026, so the first of those windows closes at the end of this year, before most agencies will have spent anything. An agency that intends to claim should rely on the second window, which means recording the date it first incurs implementation costs, with evidence that would be admissible in a civil proceeding, because the Commission dismisses a late claim for lack of jurisdiction.
Some of the underlying law is in motion. The guidance itself flags that 8 U.S.C. § 1373 is the subject of ongoing constitutional litigation, that the rescission of the "sensitive locations" policy and the courthouse-arrest policy are being litigated, that the Medicaid and SNAP data cases were pending at publication, and that the district court ruling on administrative subpoenas against state agencies is on appeal. A policy adopted in December should be built to be amended, with counsel assigned to watch those dockets.
What a public agency should do before January 1
Calendar the governing board action now. "Implement" is the statute's word, and for a city, county or district that means a policy adopted or ratified by the board at a noticed meeting, with a staff report that cites section 12532.5 and the Attorney General's guidance. Count the regular meetings left in the year, allow for the holiday schedule, and leave one meeting in reserve.
Inventory what already exists. Pull the AB 450 policy, any Values Act or TRUTH Act policy, the records request procedure, the retention schedule, the IT access policy and every vendor contract that touches personal data. Map each against the model's chapters and list the gaps.
Designate the people. The model requires named designees, with contact information in the written policy, who have authority to speak for the agency and training on the difference between administrative and judicial process. Decide now whether that is the city attorney's office, the clerk, a department head, or a combination, and how the designee is reached after hours.
Map every facility. Decide, building by building, which areas are public and which are not, and reinforce the line with signage, badge access and visitor procedures. Where a public counter has a consultation booth or an intake area where personal information is visible, treat it as nonpublic or screen it.
Write the desk guide. The guidance recommends scripts for frontline staff. Four of them cover most encounters: an officer asks to come behind the counter; an officer presents a document; an officer asks whether a person is here; an officer asks for a file or a list. Each ends the same way, with a call to the designee and a written record.
Fix the vendor contracts. Add the four terms the guidance specifies at the next amendment or renewal, and send the policy to every current vendor that holds agency data.
Review the federal data feeds. List every program reporting obligation that carries personal information, find the statute and regulation behind each, and decide which fields are required. This is the part of the work least likely to be done by January 1 and most worth starting.
Train, and document the training. The guidance asks for training on adoption and at intervals, scenario-based. A sign-in sheet and the slide deck are the evidence an agency will want later.
Start the audit clock. Set the first database audit for the first half of 2027 against the chapter 4 criteria, and have the IT department confirm now that the systems can produce the access logs the criteria assume.
Track the cost from the first hour. Open a cost center for SB 580 implementation and record the date of the first charge to it. That date starts the twelve-month test-claim window described above.
For businesses and individuals
The model policies bind public agencies, but the rules underneath them do not stop at the agency's door. AB 450 applies to every California employer: no voluntary consent to entry into nonpublic areas of a workplace, and no voluntary access to employee records, without a judicial warrant or subpoena. The Workplace Know Your Rights Act (SB 294; Lab. Code, §§ 1550–1559), in force since January 1, 2026, requires employers to give employees a standalone written notice of their rights in an immigration enforcement encounter each year by February 1, using the Labor Commissioner's template, and to let each employee designate an emergency contact to be notified if the employee is arrested or detained at work. The second annual notice is due February 1, 2027, a month after the SB 580 deadline. A business that contracts with a public agency and holds its data should expect the four vendor terms described above in its next contract, and should be ready to give the agency prompt notice if it is ever subpoenaed for that data. And anyone who deals with a public agency, as a client, a licensee, a permit applicant or a benefits recipient, now has a published standard against which to measure how that agency handles what it knows about them.
