Becerra’s Nonprofit Network and the Deportation Debate

Becerra says the administration’s policies prove that President Trump was never really interested in going after only the criminals and the people who were “doing harm in California.”

Yet, Becerra, the son of Mexican-American immigrants who became a member of Congress, state attorney general, and secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration, has avoided taking a position on whether taxpayer-funded nonprofits should be shielding serious criminals from deportation.

Becerra again this week took aim at Trump and promised to fight the administration’s deportation policies.

“We will do everything we can to make sure that we show the federal government that we’re not participating in their ICE raids and their ICE actions,” he said.

Yet Becerra has been far more reticent about how he would treat illegal immigrants with serious criminal records. The question is a pressing one for all California Democrats after Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, wife of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, sponsored a bill that would require the state to pay for an attorney for every illegal immigrant. She has declined to say whether the bill would bar people with violent felony convictions from accessing taxpayer-funded legal aid to fight deportation.

A recent investigation by the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal found that California Democrats have steered at least $1 billion in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts to more than 80 nonprofits that provide myriad services to illegal immigrants during Gavin Newsom’s time as governor.

Some of those funds underwrite basics: food, clothing, water, and shelter for migrants crossing from Mexico. But a substantial portion – at least $100 million – went to legal aid organizations whose explicit purpose is to keep undocumented immigrants, whatever their criminal history, from being deported.

Many of those organizations operate under what they call a “merits-blind” policy. They do not screen clients by the severity of their crimes. They take the cases California law says should result in deportation – serious felonies, violent offenses – and they litigate them anyway. The work unfolds largely out of public view, shielded by a state law that bars courts from disclosing a defendant’s immigration status without judicial permission.

State lawmakers tried to close this gap last year. Under pressure from Republicans, the Democrat-controlled legislature prohibited state funds from being used on legal defense for immigrant felons. The problem is that the law has no reliable enforcement mechanism, leaving the prohibition largely symbolic.

Becerra’s relationship to the nonprofits doing this work is not peripheral. It is central to his political identity.

His closest organizational ally is the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, known as CHIRLA, which received more than $100 million in state funds. The group uses those resources not only for legal aid but to organize street protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to maintain a rapid-response network that alerts undocumented immigrants across California to deportation raids. Becerra has called CHIRLA “my family.” The group’s political arm endorsed his gubernatorial campaign. Republican Steve Hilton, his closest opponent in the governor’s race, has accused CHIRLA of deploying undocumented immigrants to canvass against him.

The ties go deeper still. UnidosUS – formerly the National Council of La Raza and among the most powerful Latino advocacy organizations in the country – has maintained close relationships with Becerra for decades. UnidosUS maintains a group of 50 affiliates that provide legal services to immigrants, with some of the affiliates providing this legal aid to illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Becerra’s daughter interned there in 2012. The group helped shepherd his Senate confirmation as Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary. It paid at least $600 for him to attend a Philadelphia conference in 2005, as JusttheNews.com reported. He has appeared repeatedly at its events.

Then there is the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which has received more than $146 million in California taxpayer funds over the past decade, according to a RealClearPolitics review of state contracts and grants. Becerra partnered with the group on immigration detention policy and at least one legal case during his tenure as state attorney general.

The ILRC’s current work offers a window into how legal advocacy can reshape the practical consequences of criminal conviction. On its website, the organization markets a how-to manual for “conviction relief” – a guide to erasing “the immigration consequences of crimes” – sold to lawyers and nonprofits for $140. On the same page, it highlights a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from earlier this year holding that assault with a deadly weapon no longer automatically qualifies as a violent crime warranting deportation. The ILRC notes that the ruling applies to domestic violence cases and aggravated felony cases alike, and it urges attorneys to use the decision to reopen removal orders for clients convicted of that offense.

“Advocates should consider filing motions to reconsider/reopen and motions to remand for cases where a person was ordered removed because of [an assault with a deadly weapon] conviction,” the group writes on its site.

The ILRC was not a direct party to the underlying case, United States v. Gomez, which was litigated by public defenders’ offices across the country, including one in San Diego. But the organization received at least $540,000 in state funds in 2020 specifically to “provide legal training and technical assistance” to public defenders’ offices and other state contractors, according to grant records. Neither Becerra’s campaign nor the ILRC responded to questions about whether state funds are being used in connection with those efforts.

Becerra built much of his relationship with the ILRC during his years as state attorney general. In 2017, the group praised him and Gov. Jerry Brown for supporting legislation that froze the expansion of private immigration detention facilities in California and allocated the attorney general’s office $1 million per year for a decade to monitor such facilities. Two years later, ILRC applauded a report from Becerra's office detailing alleged abuses in detention conditions. The following year, the group joined an amicus brief alongside faith-based and immigrant justice organizations defending California's restrictions on private detention when a private prison company sued to overturn them.

A subsequent Gavin Newsom-era law banning private detention facilities statewide was eventually struck down by a federal district court in 2023 as unconstitutional.

Despite that setback, Becerra signaled this week that he would revive the effort if elected governor.

“We would take every action we can to move away from having any facilities that are privately owned detention facilities located in California,” he said, while acknowledging that federal authority limits what the state can do. “We will do everything we can to make sure if there’s a facility in California, it meets California standards.”