The California legislature is considering a supplemental budget that would send some $15 million to nonprofits that help illegal immigrants avoid deportation as part of its effort to bankroll Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) efforts to obstruct the incoming Trump administration’s policies.
The added funding was unveiled Dec. 3, the first day of a special session Newsom convened so lawmakers could approve spending on the California Democrat’s Trump resistance plan, and comes less than two weeks after state budget analysts warned that the Golden State’s $2 billion deficit is projected to swell to $20 billion by 2026. It’s part of a $60 million legislative package—more than double the $25 million that Newsom requested—that also includes funding for expected litigation at the state and local levels.
"We’re in the calm before the storm and we know the hurricane force winds are about to hit from the incoming federal administration—it’s time to get prepared and batten down the hatches," state senate president pro tem Mike McGuire (D.) said in a statement.
Newsom, who is already seen as a likely 2028 presidential candidate, vowed to secure funding to sue the Trump administration over its expected policies on abortion, climate, and transgender issues. He also promised to combat President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated promises to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records. Surveys have shown that a majority of Americans support mass deportations, and immigration consistently polled among the top concerns for voters ahead of the presidential election—even in California.
Of the $15 million carved out for illegal immigrants in the supplementary budget proposal before the state senate, the Department of Social Services would receive $10 million for grants or contracts to organizations "to provide immigration legal services and removal defense." The department has already shelled out $37 million in grants in this year to pro-migration nonprofits like Al Otro Lado, Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, and Chinese for Affirmative Action.
Al Otro Lado has bases in California and Mexico where attorneys counsel illegal immigrants on how to make asylum claims and avoid deportation. It also routinely sues the federal government over alleged human rights violations and in June sued the Biden administration for alleged glitches in its asylum-processing app. Al Otro Lado collaborates with top law schools to provide free legal advice, including the University of California, Los Angeles, Northwestern University, and New York University.
Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, part of the national Catholic-affiliated group that collects about half a billion dollars each year in government grants, is another pro-immigration powerhouse in the state. It provides free legal services for illegal immigrants while helping bring their families to the United States. The group also runs taxpayer-funded shelters for undocumented minors who enter the United States alone.
Chinese for Affirmative Action is a San Francisco-based group that successfully championed a 2018 ordinance to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. It pushed a similar measure in Santa Ana in November, though that one failed. Earlier this year, one of its staff members—a Chinese national from Hong Kong—became the first noncitizen to serve on San Francisco’s elections board.
Another $5 million from Democrats’ proposed budget would go to the California Access to Justice Commission—a nonprofit rather than a government entity. The funding would "facilitate pro bono legal services for especially vulnerable communities, including establishing an immigration detention representation and coordination program to coordinate legal consultations and representation and increase access to counsel to detained individuals in California," according to the legislation. It would also support data security projects "to protect client, staff, and volunteer data, such as a person’s immigration status, gender, or other personal sensitive information," according to a summary of the budget plan.
In 2023, the California Access for Justice disbursed some $5 million in grants on behalf of the state, as well as $250,000 for student loan repayments, tax forms show. Its directors include state judges and a state supreme court justice. Some of its top-funded groups have included the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which works to release detained illegal immigrants, and Centro Legal de la Raza, a nonprofit firm that sues to fight detention of illegal immigrants as well as landlords and employers over alleged violations.
Illegal immigrants would also likely benefit from the $10 million that California Democrats proposed sending to the California State Bar’s Legal Services Trust Fund Commission. While the budget proposal doesn’t specify that the funding must be spent on immigrants, it does earmark it for legal services for indigent people at risk of being detained, deported, or evicted. Awards would go to organizations that already receive money from the commission, which include pro-immigration nonprofits like the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law San Francisco, Al Otro Lado, and the LGBT Asylum Project in San Francisco, which says its clients come to the city’s Castro District, a gay tourism hub, "to find a sanctuary."
Newsom has not weighed in on the budget proposal before the state senate. In convening the special budget session he called on lawmakers to support "administrative action … to mitigate the impacts of actions by the incoming Trump administration."
"We're reviewing the senate’s proposal," a spokeswoman for Newsom said in an email. "Our office is actively collaborating with legislative leaders and the attorney general to refine and advance the measures introduced." The legislature is expected to vote on a final plan in January.
The proposed supplementary spending comes less than two weeks after California’s budget watchdog warned state leaders that there was no money to spare. The state also faced a $68 billion deficit last year.
"There is really no capacity for new commitments because we do estimate there to be pretty significant operating deficits in subsequent years," legislative analyst Gabriel Petek said Nov. 20.
In response, McGuire said the legislature needed "to continue to buckle down on spending and be incredibly strategic on any future fiscal expansion." He defended the additional spending after the budget expansion was introduced in his chamber last week.
The extra funding "will help protect the people, policies, and progress of the Golden State," he said in a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon. "Fundamental rights" are at particular risk, "so we have put forward a budget bill focused on bolstering legal resources at the state and local level," McGuire added.
In addition to the $25 million and $10 million earmarked in the senate bill for litigation at the state and local levels, respectively, some governments in California are boosting their own lawsuit budgets as well. Santa Clara County—an affluent region south of San Francisco that includes Stanford University and part of Silicon Valley—announced on Dec. 3 an extra $5 million "to help defend immigrants." The same county, which this year had to close a $250 million deficit, already spends $6 million annually on "the legal needs of the county’s diverse immigrant communities."
California became a sanctuary state after passing a 2017 law barring police from working with federal immigration officials to deport illegal migrants arrested for some crimes and misdemeanors. Last year, San Francisco, which has imposed sanctuary status since 1989, killed a proposal to block those protections from serial fentanyl dealers, as the city reels under a deadly overdose crisis. Los Angeles’s city council passed its own sanctuary law on Wednesday.
Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is reportedly eyeing a bid to succeed Newsom as governor in 2026, last week disseminated guidance for taxpayer-funded entities like colleges, universities, K-12 schools, shelters, and libraries to stonewall federal immigration probes. Bonta urged Californians to snitch if they believe anyone at these institutions is "unlawfully assisting with immigration enforcement."