California is on the verge of passing Senate Bill 21 (SB 21), a strong bill that, in its current form, would help empower communities and their local elected officials to stop secret and discriminatory use of police surveillance technologies. Making sure state lawmakers enact robust surveillance reform laws is all the more important right now as the Trump administration equips its deportation force with surveillance capabilities, aggressively pursues political activists, and escalates pressure on sanctuary cities. Now is the time to make sure a strong SB 21 — with no further amendments — gets across the finish line.

For years, the secret use of surveillance technology has been consistently expanding with virtually no restraints. Law enforcement agencies nationwide, using federal funds, have amassed sophisticated technologies, including Stingray cell phone trackers, automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), drones, and algorithm-based policing software.

These surveillance technologies are frequently used to target immigrants and communities of color. South Asian, Muslim and Sikh protesters were spied on in San Jose. Baltimore police used facial recognition technology to identify people protesting the police killing of Freddie Gray. And social media surveillance technology in Fresno enabled police to monitor hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter as “threats to public safety.” Residents of Compton, California, have been monitored in their own backyards with high-powered, fly-over cameras and the New York Police Department used license plate readers to track people as they worshiped at mosques. Now immigrant communities living along the United States and Mexico border are facing an invasive new program to scan their eyeballs.

Californians want reform, with more than two-thirds supporting both local and state-level rules to rein in police surveillance. If passed in its current form, SB 21 will become the first state law to require transparency and community control over police decisions about surveillance technology. The bill requires a public debate over proposals to acquire new surveillance technologies. It places local communities and elected officials at the center of every decision to approve or reject their locality’s use of surveillance technologies. And should local elected leaders approve the use of a surveillance technology, SB 21 requires the adoption of a council-approved policy governing its use and regular evaluations of its impact on civil rights and civil liberties.

Take action: Urge California to pass a strong SB 21 to rein in secret and discriminatory surveillance.

The need for surveillance reform is not just a local issue. Sensitive surveillance information about who we are, where we go, and what we do that is collected by local law enforcement often flows, without adequate controls, to the federal government through fusion centers, which collect and share surveillance data from all levels of government, as well as other domestic spying infrastructure. This is not a hypothetical threat. Just ask Oakland, California, which despite being a sanctuary city, discovered that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was using a fusion center to get its hands on Oakland’s license plate reader data. SB 21’s provisions, which empower communities to consider if and how any surveillance information is shared with the federal government, are particularly important in the current political climate.

SB 21 builds on the nationwide Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) movement, a reform effort spearheaded by 17 organizations, including the ACLU, that is designed to put local residents and elected officials in charge of decisions about surveillance technology. Last summer, Santa Clara County, California passed a groundbreaking ordinance ensuring consistent transparency, accountability, and oversight procedures for all surveillance decisions in the county. Nashville adopted a CCOPS law earlier this summer, and Seattle just voted to strengthen its first-in-the-nation surveillance ordinance.

California’s SB 21 has emerged at a key moment — right now at least 18 U.S. cities are actively considering their own surveillance bills. Oakland is poised to enact a robust ordinance in an effort led by the city’s new Privacy Advisory Commission. In New York City, the ACLU of New York and various community groups are fighting to end the NYPD’s secret use of surveillance technology and prevent any inappropriate data sharing with the Trump administration. Residents in St. Louis are working to pass a CCOPS law as a part of broader efforts to address discriminatory policing in the region.

We need strong local and state protections to push secret surveillance into the light, put communities back in control, and prevent abusive practices that all too often target immigrants, people of color, religious groups, and activists.

We hope you’ll urge California lawmakers to pass a strong SB 21 — with no further amendments — and in so doing set an example for other cities and states to follow.

To learn more about the CCOPS effort and how to start or join an effort in your community, please visit CommunityCTRL.com.

Nicole Ozer is the Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director for the ACLU of California and Chad Marlow is advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU, where his focus is on privacy and technology.

“Apartheid was legal. The Holocaust was legal. Slavery was legal. Colonialism was legal. Legality is a matter of power, not justice.” —Jose Antonio Vargas

Ten state attorneys general threaten to file a lawsuit by September 5 to seek the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, leaving about 800,000 immigrant youth at risk of immediate deportation.

They say the law is the law.

But in their version of the law, is there justice or fairness?

I grew up a mixed-race child in a conservative Japanese town where racial discrimination was a near daily fact of life. My parents wanted to move to the United States where they believed all children were treated as equals, but they were told by lawyers that if they applied for citizenship it would be a 20-year wait. And could still fail.

Not able to see their child suffer discrimination any longer, they decided it was worth it to come to the U.S. even if they had to live undocumented without work permits, driver’s licenses or social security numbers. In 2004, they bought for the three of us one-way tickets to California.

Twelve years later, I concluded my freshman year at Harvard University. Meanwhile, my parents lived in a rusty garage in Los Angeles and worked at an elderly care facility for $6 an hour under the table. I saw my mom weep as her manipulative employer unapologetically denied her paycheck for two consecutive months. My father helplessly clenched his sunbaked hands — the same hands that had dragged groceries in a makeshift cart aboard the Metro 233 bus to avoid deportation for driving without a license.

Many nights, my parents glared at the TV screen as a rich presidential candidate wearing a red hat rose to power. Their remaining hopes of immigration reform became eviscerated as Trump chanted: “job stealer.”

My parents retuned to Japan. As a Dreamer kid covered by DACA, I stayed.

My friend Ivan is also a Dreamer. When he was nine, he and his mom fled north to the U.S. to escape cartel violence. Here, they had no immediate family or employment opportunities. But they could survive.

We began our friendship in high school freshmen art class. He was a defensive safety on our football team and worked at a local cellphone store.

A few months ago, Ivan was charged with robbery. The outlook is grim — he can’t afford a good lawyer. If convicted, he will not only go to jail, but — much worse — he’ll have his DACA revoked and be forced back to the violence he had desperately escaped.

The government will celebrate another deportation of a “felon.”

So, please tell me that the law is the law.

And I will respond with facts of immigrants starting businesses, growing the economy, and committing less crime than native-born people. Then I will show you that undocumented immigrants contribute $11 billion in taxes and $13 billion to Social Security.

I will illustrate how generations of now-“legal” ancestors passed through U.S. immigration systems so different from today. Prior to the 20th century, strict national immigration law was nonexistent and Ellis Island merely required health and sanity for entry.

But still, I will bond with you over how liberating it must have felt for your Irish, German, Polish or Italian ancestors to travel endless seas to find refuge in the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

I will remind you that America started with the simple idea of protecting a fundamental human liberty — the pursuit of happiness.

In doing so, I will show you that even “job stealers” like my parents and “felons” like my friend deserve to stay here just as much as my fellow undocumented classmates.

I will tell you that we work, study, and live here.

Yet still, there are those who will tell me, “the law is the law.”

But the law is not justice.

Daishi Miguel Tanaka was a communications and media advocacy intern with the ACLU of Southern California.