California’s Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee voted 11-2 on April 7 to advance a bill that would let employees and volunteers at immigration service organizations demand the deletion of their images and personal information from the internet, backed by civil penalties starting at $4,000 and the threat of criminal charges.
AB 2624, authored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, is already being called the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.”
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The bill arrives just weeks after investigative video creator Nick Shirley published a 40-minute video on alleged hospice fraud in California that racked up 42 million views on X.
Other investigations have found that a single program is causing the state to lose an alleged $6 billion in fraud annually. Shirley had already reported on over $110 million in Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota in December 2025, with empty facilities billing taxpayers while kids were nowhere to be found.
His California reporting uncovered an alleged $170 million in similar fraud in daycares and hospices, with ghost operations registered to empty lots and strip malls. Sacramento’s response to this flood of documented waste and abuse was not an audit, not an investigation into the programs themselves, but a bill to make it harder to film the people running them.
Under AB 2624, anyone affiliated with an organization providing “designated immigration support services” can send a written demand prohibiting the publication of their personal information or image online.
That demand remains effective for four years, even after the person leaves the organization. If the demand is ignored, the person can go to court for an injunction or declaratory relief.
Fines run up to three times the actual damages, with a floor of $4,000, meaning the minimum penalty triples to $12,000 in cases where a takedown demand is defied. If a journalist or anyone else is accused of posting information with the intent to incite harm, they face criminal charges and fines of $10,000.
Hellbound and Down 