Former Vice President Kamala Harris has been given a security detail by California law enforcement, including the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department, after President Donald Trump revoked the extended Secret Service protection she had received under former President Joe Biden.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is receiving protection from California law enforcement after President Donald Trump ended her extended Secret Service detail, according to CBS News Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) provided the security detail following the federal decision, which took effect on September 1, 2025.
Why Harris lost her Secret Service detail
Under a 2008 federal law, former vice presidents, their spouses and their children under 16 generally receive Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office. The law allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to extend that protection temporarily if conditions warrant it.
Before leaving office in January 2025, then-President Biden signed a directive extending Harris’s detail to 18 months after the end of her term. In late August 2025, President Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to rescind that extension, effective September 1, through an executive memorandum that amended Biden’s directive, according to two senior Department of Homeland Security officials cited by CBS News. The decision was first reported by CNN.
DHS officials said the Secret Service would comply with the order. According to sources cited by CBS News, a Secret Service threat assessment of Harris did not find anything that would justify extending her detail beyond the standard six months.
How California stepped in
After the federal detail ended, California law enforcement agencies took on Harris’s protection. CBS News reported that the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division, which includes citywide Tactical Response Teams, was involved alongside the CHP. According to the LAPD’s website, those teams have previously worked with the Secret Service and the State Department to protect presidents, vice presidents and foreign dignitaries, and they provide security at high-profile events in Los Angeles such as awards shows.
Harris, a former U.S. senator and state attorney general from California, lives in Los Angeles.
What Harris’s office said
Kirsten Allen, a senior adviser to Harris, said the former vice president “is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism” and thanked the agency for its commitment to her safety.
Questions about a state-provided detail
A state or city security detail differs from federal protection in several ways. State and local officers have law enforcement authority within their own jurisdiction, and the Secret Service has national resources, including protective intelligence work and coordination with federal agencies, that local departments do not have on the same scale. How Harris would be protected when traveling outside California, and how long the state arrangement would last, were not detailed in the initial reports.
The arrangement also drew political reaction. Supporters of Harris criticized the Trump administration’s decision, while some critics of the state arrangement questioned whether state resources should be used to protect a former federal official.
Part of a wider pattern
The Trump administration has also removed Secret Service protection from other figures, including former national security adviser John Bolton and Biden’s adult children, Hunter and Ashley Biden. Former presidents and their spouses receive lifetime protection, but their children generally lose it at age 16. Biden had extended protection for his adult children before leaving office, according to sources who spoke to CBS News in March 2025.
Source: CBS News
