Gavin Newsom Spent Nearly a Billion Dollars Subsidizing the Migrant Machine

A City Journal investigation by Christopher Rufo and RealClearPolitics’ Susan Crabtree traced roughly $1,000,000,000 in California state grants from Governor Gavin Newsom (D) to a network of nonprofits that, the report says, helped draw migrants into the state, fought deportations in court, and organized street protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The money is real, it is documented in state funding records, and it flowed during the same years California ran multibillion-dollar deficits.

The grants are only one channel. Separately, California’s decision to extend full Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented immigrants has grown into an $8,500,000,000-a-year general-fund line item covering roughly 1.6 million people — a program that blew past projections by $2,700,000,000in a single year and helped push the state’s Medicaid program toward insolvency.

These are two distinct numbers and they should not be blurred: the City Journal figure is roughly $1,000,000,000 in grants to immigration-services nonprofits over Newsom’s tenure; the Medi-Cal figure is an annual recurring cost in the billions. Together they sketch a state government that, while facing a $12,000,000,000deficit, kept the spigot open — until it couldn’t.

• ~$1,000,000,000 — in California state grants traced to immigration-services and advocacy nonprofits under Newsom · Source: Rufo & Crabtree, City Journal, April 22, 2026
• $8,500,000,000/yr — general-fund cost of extending full Medi-Cal coverage to ~1.6 million undocumented immigrants · Source: Newsom administration estimate / CalMatters, May 2025
• $2,700,000,000 — amount Medi-Cal spending on undocumented enrollees overran its own forecast in one year — a key driver of the freeze · Source: California Dept. of Finance / CalMatters

The central finding of the City Journal investigation is blunt: since Newsom took office in 2019, California has granted on the order of $1,000,000,000to nonprofits in the immigration-services and advocacy space. The authors, citing state funding records, name the recipients and the amounts — not estimates, but contract figures pulled from California’s own books.

The largest single recipient identified is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), which the report says has been awarded roughly $110,000,000from California taxpayers. The authors describe CHIRLA as a “one-stop activist machine” able to produce messaging, file litigation, and turn people out into the streets — capabilities on display during the anti-ICE demonstrations that swept Los Angeles.

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The grant list runs well beyond CHIRLA. According to the City Journal accounting of state funding records, California has steered more than $250,000,000 to Catholic Charities, $85,000,000 to Jewish Family Services, $23,000,000 to the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, and $12,000,000 to Centro Legal de la Raza, among others. Smaller but pointed grants reached groups the report characterizes as openly anti-borders activists.

Much of the funding is routed through legal-defense and “rapid response” programs whose stated purpose is to help migrants resist removal. The report points to outfits such as the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which it says received more than $6,700,000 in state funds, and Al Otro Lado, which it says took in more than $2,000,000— organizations that, in the authors’ telling, treat enforcement of federal immigration law as the thing to be defeated.

“I honestly just believe that there's no reason for why we should have borders.”

Al Otro Lado attorney Diego Teixeira, as quoted in City Journal · April 22, 2026

The grants are the headline, but the larger fiscal story is health care. Newsom’s expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal to all income-eligible undocumented adults — completed in 2024 — now covers roughly 1.6 million people at a general-fund cost the administration itself pegs near $8,500,000,000 a year. That is recurring spending, every year, on top of the one-time grants.

The program did not stay on budget. Costs for undocumented enrollees overran the state’s own forecast by $2,700,000,000 in a single year, and the broader Medi-Cal program required billions in loan requests to stay solvent. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office notes that total Medi-Cal spending has nearly doubled, to around $200,000,000,000, across Newsom’s two terms — a major contributor to California’s structural deficit.

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Facing a $12,000,000,000 deficit, Newsom did something his progressive allies called a betrayal: in May 2025 he proposed freezing new Medi-Cal enrollment for undocumented adults starting in 2026 and charging monthly premiums — a package his office estimated would save more than $5,400,000,000 by 2028-29. The final 2025-26 budget enacted the freeze and a $30-a-month premium, and the May 2026 revision pushed the premium higher and stripped dental coverage for undocumented adults.

Washington added its own pressure. Federal auditors at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the HHS Office of Inspector General concluded that California and a handful of other blue states improperly claimed more than $1,000,000,000 in federal Medicaid dollars tied to people without legal status — with California the largest share of a combined $1,351,204,127 across six jurisdictions. CMS signaled it intends to claw the money back.

“Every dollar misspent on illegal health care spending is a dollar taken from vulnerable Americans.”

HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard · 2026

It is worth keeping the two figures straight, because critics and defenders alike tend to mash them together. The $1,000,000,000 in City Journal’s reporting is the cumulative total of state grants to immigration nonprofits over Newsom’s years in office. The Medi-Cal number — roughly $8,500,000,000a year — is recurring health-coverage spending that dwarfs the grants and operates on an entirely separate track.

What ties them together is a single executive choice: the Newsom administration prioritized expansive benefits and funding for the undocumented population even as the state slid into deficit. When the math finally forced a retreat, it was the beneficiaries — not the advocacy contracts — who felt the first cuts.

Accountability here is not abstract. The grants flowed under Newsom’s administration and were appropriated by a legislature his party controls with a supermajority. The Medi-Cal expansion was signed into law by Newsom and celebrated as a progressive milestone before it became a budget emergency. The names are on the documents.

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