California Spent at Least $11 Billion on Illegal Immigrants, and Welfare Offices Admitted It on the Record

California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year, according to an investigation published September 23, 2026, by City Journal. Reporters Christopher F. Rufo, Kenneth Schrupp and Austen Hufford visited four public-services offices in Southern California, and each one admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public-welfare programs or collect benefits on their children’s behalf.

The report describes what its authors call a shadow welfare system: a web of state- and locally funded programs that lets noncitizens receive health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance and even free phones on the taxpayers’ dime.

What the welfare officers said

The most striking material is what state workers told the reporters to their faces. In Glendale, a welfare officer explained the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, known as CAPI, a state-funded alternative to federal Supplemental Security Income that pays monthly cash to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled. His summary of the rules: “If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI. I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”

That is not an exaggeration of state policy. The California Department of Social Services describes CAPI as a 100 percent state-funded program for noncitizens who are 65 or older, blind or disabled and who are ineligible for SSI “solely due to their immigration status.” Benefits are set equal to SSI amounts. In other words, there is a cash program in California that an American citizen cannot qualify for.

In Los Angeles, another officer described how CalWORKs, the state’s version of federal welfare for needy families, works when the parent is in the country illegally and the child was born here. “Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her,” the officer said. City Journal also reports that BenefitsCal, the state’s welfare clearinghouse, tells applicants it will accept a statement that they intend to file, or are taking steps, to become federally eligible.

Add it up, the reporters wrote, and a family of five with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.

How California routes around federal law

Federal law generally bars states from spending federal dollars on benefits for illegal immigrants. California’s answer, according to the report, was to build parallel programs paid for entirely with state and local money.

Medi-Cal is the biggest example. Using a state-funded portion of its Medicaid program, California extended full-scope health coverage to illegal immigrants. City Journal reports the expansions enrolled some 1.7 million people at an estimated cost to the state of $10 billion a year, more than twice what the state’s legislative analyst originally projected. Even Sacramento has had to pull back: under the 2025 state budget deal, Medi-Cal froze new full-scope enrollment for undocumented adults 19 and older on January 1, 2026, ended dental coverage for those enrollees on July 1, 2026, and will begin charging many of them a $30 monthly premium in 2027, according to KQED. The freeze applies to new enrollment, not to people already covered.

The phones are their own story. In October 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1303, which makes providing a Social Security number optional for enrollment in California LifeLine, the program that provides free or discounted phone service. As the City Journal team walked through several Los Angeles welfare offices, they saw cellphone providers pitching LifeLine plans, and one representative told them applicants can enroll with a Mexican consular identification card.

Washington noticed. In November 2025, the Federal Communications Commission revoked California’s exemption from the federal Lifeline verification process. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said “California also has a bad track record of complying with federal Lifeline program rules” and added: “Federal dollars should not pay for California’s abuse of the Lifeline program.”

Still expanding

The freeze on adult Medi-Cal enrollment is not the whole picture. In 2022, Newsom signed a law extending state-funded food benefits to low-income residents regardless of immigration status, and, according to City Journal, qualified Californians 55 and older will become eligible for that program beginning next October. The report says the state’s Legislative Analyst estimates the expansion could cost up to an additional $400 million a year.

The state’s Low Cost Auto Insurance Program tells drivers they may qualify for subsidized coverage “regardless of immigration status.” And state leaders are not hiding any of this. The report notes that Newsom, on a recent podcast, described his decision to extend Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants as “controversial,” and that promotional materials for the California Earned Income Tax Credit, which First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom has encouraged people to claim, assure applicants that “no Social Security number” is “no problem.” The governor’s office did not respond to City Journal’s request for comment by deadline.

Who pays

California already runs the largest welfare system in the country, spending more than $180 billion a year, and funds it with the nation’s highest tax rates, according to the report. Meanwhile, the authors write, ordinary Californians are “depleting their savings, working long hours, and taking on tons of debt simply to pay the bills.”

That is the part that should anger every working family in the state. The issue is not whether a poor child should see a doctor. It is whether a state that cannot keep its own budget promises should be running a parallel benefits system for people who are in the country in violation of federal law, while the citizens footing the bill are told to tighten their belts. The report’s closing line says it best: “In California, citizenship merely determines who pays.”

California has built a welfare program that citizens are barred from, and then sent them the bill for it.

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