Lea esta historia en Español

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed 31 felony charges of wage theft and tax evasion against a construction company that he said cost the state and the company’s workers $2.6 million, he announced today.

Bonta filed the criminal complaint on Aug. 26 alleging that US Framing West dodged more than $2.5 million in state payroll taxes and underpaid workers on a public housing project in Cathedral City, in Riverside County. The company, which builds wood framing for such projects as hotels, apartments and housing developments, shorted workers at least $40,000 when it failed to pay the prevailing wage, Bonta said.

“For some reason US Framing West seems to think it can operate outside the prevailing wage laws of California,” Bonta said in a press conference in Los Angeles today. “I’m here with a simple message: They cannot. No company can.”

Cal Matters contacted officials with US Framing West named on its website but did not receive a response.

Read Next

Why are California workers waiting so long on wage theft claims? A new audit has answers

by Jeanne Kuang

Bonta charged the company and two of its officials, Thomas Gregory English and Amelia Frazier Krebs, with wage and tax violations in Riverside, San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties.

Political observers expect Bonta to announce a run for governor, so publicizing a high-profile labor case may help him build support from unions. Most wage theft cases brought by the state are handled administratively or in civil court. 

Between 2018 and 2022, US Framing West hired unlicensed subcontractors and underreported its payroll to the state Employment Development Department, Bonta said. He accused the company of grand theft, payroll tax evasion, prevailing wage theft, and filing false documents with the state.

US Framing West also skipped personal income tax withholding and premiums for state unemployment and disability insurance, Bonta said, and it filed false payroll records for workers on Veterans Village, the Cathedral City project. The facility opened in 2022, offering 60 housing units and services for veterans. 

The complaint says the company stole wages from 19 workers in Riverside County in 2021 and 2022. Under California’s penal code, employers can face grand theft charges for stealing more than $950 in wages or tips from one employee or a total of $2,350 from two or more employees within a year. 

The Northern California Carpenters Regional Council tipped off the state Department of Justice to potential wage theft violations at an Oakland construction project in 2019, Bonta said. The department subsequently looked into US Framing West’s other projects across the state. 

The office filed charges in August, and the two named defendants surrendered and were arraigned this month.

Subsidizing crime

California’s prevailing wage requirements apply to most projects built with public funding, said  Matthew Miller, senior field representative for labor compliance for Nor Cal Carpenters Union. He said US Framing West was working on at least four housing projects financed with tax credits.

“California taxpayers are subsidizing criminal activity in the affordable housing industry,” Miller said.

He added that developers should avoid doing business with companies that skirt employment and tax laws. 

Wage theft can take various forms — employers don’t pay employees for all hours worked, don’t pay the minimum wage, skip overtime pay or don’t allow legally required breaks. In California, workers lose about $2 billion a year to wage theft, Bonta’s office said, and workers in low-wage industries are the most affected. In 2020 and 2021, workers filed claims for more than $300 million in stolen wages each year.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, called wage theft “the number one crime” in the burglary and theft category and said businesses should not be able to pay their way out of wage theft violations. 

Read More

Though wage theft is a crime, few California DAs file charges for it

October 24, 2022October 25, 2022

California is sitting on millions that could boost wage theft response

June 10, 2024June 10, 2024

Lea esta historia en Español

When he was 18, Chanthon Bun recalled, he was the lookout during a Los Angeles robbery in which no one was hurt. He sentenced to 50 years in state prison. 

Incarcerated for 23 years, he was paroled in 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic. 

Bun had come to the United States as a refugee at age 6. He was born during the Cambodian Genocide, when millions of people were put into work camps, separated from their families, and killed by the communist Khmer Rouge.

Although he’s a legal permanent resident of the United States, the 46-year-old is among the thousands of Californians who live in constant fear of deportation because of a past criminal conviction. That threat became even more serious earlier this month when Donald Trump was re-elected. The president-elect has vowed to launch the biggest militarized mass deportation in U.S. history, and his team has since doubled down on those threats. 

“I worry about what’s going to happen to my kids,” Bun said. “It’s like you’re not even here. Your mind is in such fear that you can’t even enjoy breathing.” 

Immigration experts warn of an indiscriminate dragnet that could put almost anyone at risk, but some are in more immediate jeopardy than others. Those include non-citizens who have had contact with the criminal justice system; some 1.3 million people nationwide who have already received final orders of removal, and undocumented people who may live or work in close proximity to the other two groups. 

“Folks who have had contact with the criminal legal system will be of high priority,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the left-leaning Washington think tank American Immigration Council. “Under current immigration law, that includes people who might have convictions from decades prior. There’s no statute of limitations on when the government can remove someone.”  

Communities closer to the border may be at greater risk early in the next Trump administration because that’s where more Customs and Border Protection agents and Border Patrol officials are located. Trump has said he plans to use those agencies to carry out his mass deportation plan.  

For months, advocates have been planning ways to fight back.

“He doesn’t own our states,” said Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union. “And our states will be the frontline in the defense of our civil liberties and our civil rights.” 

California, which has the country’s largest immigrant population, already has strong state laws to protect immigrant communities from mass deportations, although not as strong as Oregon and Illinois, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Those two states have comprehensive laws restricting transfers of people to ICE, whereas California state prison employees regularly contact the federal immigration enforcement agency about inmates in their custody, including United States citizens, public records show. Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit that provides legal training and does pro-immigrant policy work in California and Texas, estimates 70 to 75% of ICE arrests in the interior of the U.S. are handoffs from another law enforcement agency, such as local jails or state or federal prisons. 

During Trump’s first term, California led in resisting federal deportation of undocumented immigrants by becoming the first ‘sanctuary state’ that curbed local agencies’ cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But before that law was signed, it was weakened to allow state prisons to continue their coordination with ICE and to give federal immigration agents access to interview people in prisons and jails. Protections that limited police agencies sharing data with ICE were also weakened to allow for information to be provided if a person has been convicted of one of some 800 crimes.  

The day after Trump’s second election, Gov. Gavin Newsom summoned the Legislature, dominated by his fellow Democrats, to a special session starting Dec. 2 — vowing to “protect California values” as the state braces for renewed clashes with the incoming administration. 

Trump’s political ascent was fueled by racist and xenophobic rhetoric about immigrants:  At a December 2023 campaign rally in New Hampshire, for instance, he said they were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He’s promised to expend massive federal resources on raids and sweeps in immigrant communities, especially in ‘sanctuary cities.’ One goal: to discourage future illegal immigration.

“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice,” he recently told NBC. “When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

A majority of registered voters – 56% – agree with enforcing mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally, according to the Pew Research Center. In a separate survey by Data for Progress, 67% of voters say they supported deporting an undocumented person who has a criminal record for a non-violent offense. 

In California, immigrant advocates want the state to step up again.   

“We’re looking to California to provide leadership,” said Alex Mensing with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. “We fully expect California to stand up to ICE’s terror as a state. We fully expect the state to put as much creativity and as many resources as possible toward supporting a response that defends immigrants.”  

In an interview with CalMatters, Attorney General Rob Bonta said Friday his office is preparing legal challenges and bracing for “a full frontal assault on our immigrant communities.”

“We are ready to file,” he added. “We have been thinking about and preparing and readying ourselves for the possibility of this moment for months.”

Bonta said his office has been carefully watching and listening to what the president-elect and his team say they are planning, “and, thankfully, he’s telling us what he’s going to do.” 

“The Trump administration 1.0 told us one thing: that Trump is unable to not break the law. It’s his brand. He does what he wants to do, when he wants to and how he wants to, regardless of the Constitution or federal law. And by doing that, he breaks the law,” Bonta said. “That’s why our job is so important to be there when he does and to stop him from doing it.”

The state’s attorney general office spent about $10 million a year in legal expenses fighting Trump during the last administration, Bonta acknowledged, but “you can’t put a price on freedom, on rights, on democracy. It is always the right time and the right thing to protect those rights.” During the last Trump administration, California’s attorneys successfully defended protections for people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, for example. 

For years, the Golden State has been increasing protections for immigrants. 

This year, California passed a law that will allow county health workers to inspect inside federal immigration detention centers where there has been a long documented history of medical neglect and worker safety violations. In 2023, the state fined the for-profit prison operator Geo Group $100,000 for six workplace violations, including lacking a plan to control COVID-19 spread and failure to provide information and training on hazardous chemicals.    

Advocates say more could be done, such as strengthening data protections in local police agencies and preventing state prison staff from coordinating with ICE. 

The governor could pardon immigrants with old criminal records, shielding them from deportation. Newsom has done it when certain refugees faced removal due to old cases, like Bun’s, but Newsom’s clemency rate has been lower than that of other governors. 

“Governor Newsom has pardoned far fewer people than Governor Brown,” said Angela Chan, assistant chief attorney of the San Francisco public defender’s office. “Thus far, in his six years in office, Governor Newsom has granted 186 pardons, an average of 31 pardons a year. By contrast, Governor Brown issued 1,332 pardons during his third and fourth terms as governor, an average of 166 pardons per year.”

There are limits to what California can do. Lots of legal issues remain unresolved and will be battled out in court. Most sanctuary laws have a caveat that says local law enforcement cannot cooperate with immigration authorities “unless required by a valid court order.” Experts said what constitutes a valid court order might become an issue for the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court let California’s sanctuary law stand in 2020 by not hearing a Trump challenge to it.

The state also can’t do much about military troops entering California. The president can federalize the National Guard. In 2018, Trump sent nearly 6,000 active-duty service members to the border, authorizing them to perform “military protective activities.” 

“It’s going to have to be fought out in the courts,” said Shawn VanDiver, a national security expert.

Some of the avenues Trump is exploring to deploy the military, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, would require an invasion by a foreign government, some lawyers say. Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union who argued challenges to immigration restrictions during Trump’s first term, said the president-elect’s plan to use the military is illegal, and the civil liberties organization was already preparing legal challenges. 

“Trump is going to do everything that he can get away with,” said Mensing. 

But there are limits to what Trump can do too, particularly based on the resources he’d need to deliver on some of his campaign promises. 

The president-elect has said he plans to carry out a million deportations a year. The highest number of deportations in a single fiscal year in recent history was fiscal year 2012 – during the Obama administration – with 407,821 deportations across the United States. During Trump’s first term, he was only able to carry out several hundred thousand removals a year, about on par with other presidents, at least partly because of California and other states’ new sanctuary laws.

According to the American Immigration Council, the long-term cost of deporting one million people annually could average $88 billion annually, which would be higher than the Department of Homeland Security’s $62 billion budget in fiscal year 2025. It would also require massive expansions of federal immigration court systems and detention facilities.  

Deportations from California have reached record lows in recent years following the changes in state law and policy about ICE pick-ups and new federal regulations about COVID testing before pick-ups at state prisons, public records show.

Advocates are emphasizing the need for community preparedness and organization to combat the anticipated crackdown on immigrants in California. 

“There are a lot of people actively preparing, and I think community members should take heart in that and also participate,” said Mensing. “Ultimately, that is what is going to prevent Trump from getting what he wants, which is to terrorize people.”   

In immigrant communities across the state, advocates are helping those at risk of detention and deportation make emergency plans, including who will pick up their children from school and how to protect their assets in the United States. ‘Know your rights’ workshops are being organized, and neighbors are helping each other get informed. 

“Power not panic” is a mantra Mensing and others often repeat. “Trump is going to attack sanctuary cities and sanctuary states because he is vindictive. Our main tools are to be organized and to be informed,” he said.   

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, a Quaker organization, said even people with some form of legal status and protection are concerned. 

“The amount of worry and the amount of uncertainty that people have is just tremendous and what I tell people is to find a supportive community and to not be alone at this time,” said Rios. He said he was asked to talk to a 6-year-old child “because what he had been hearing in his school terrified him.” 

Bun said his phone has also been ringing nonstop with urgent calls from fellow Cambodian refugees across the country. Meanwhile, he’s been trying to figure out how to tell his own 3-year-old son that there might be a knock on the door and he’ll be gone forever. 

“This is like planning a life sentence,” he said. “How could you plan for that?” 

Journalism engineer Mohamed Al Elew contributed to this report.

Lea esta historia en Español

After flood waters from heavy rainstorms deluged two small farmworker towns in early 2023, California set aside $20 million each for the communities to rebuild. 

Nearly two years since the floods, four-fifths of that aid has not yet been distributed to flood victims of Planada in Merced County, and even less has been distributed in Pajaro in Monterey County.

While county officials and non-profit workers say the slow pace stems from a deliberative planning process and state rules requiring verification of recipients’ residency and losses, a new atmospheric river soaking Northern California is causing anxiety for locals who saw their neighborhoods destroyed once before.

Winter storms caused waterways to overflow in the two communities, hitting many residents with a triple whammy: displaced from their homes, their possessions destroyed, their work hours in the field cut. State lawmakers granted the relief funds in the fall of 2023. The counties divided them into various pots to cover reimbursement for belongings and wages, home repair, business losses, and infrastructure improvements to prepare for the next storm.

As of this month, about $4 million of the $20 million in state aid designated for Planada had been spent, the bulk of that in direct payments to families, Merced County spokesperson Mike North said.

In Pajaro, county officials working with nonprofits have handed out about $1.3 million of its $20 million share: $450,000 in grocery gift cards to residents whose food spoiled during the flooding, plus about another $800,000 to people and businesses with larger losses not covered by federal disaster aid or private insurance.

Angela DiNovella, the executive director of Catholic Charities Diocese of Monterey – one of two organizations contracted with Monterey County to help Pajaro residents apply for the funds – said her organization’s three case workers were distributing an average of $30,000 per week to families.

One of the main challenges, she said, was verifying eligibility for families who lacked a permanent address or lived in overcrowded conditions, such as when three families share a single apartment. Some people also struggled to document how much they had lost, so caseworkers were doing the painstaking labor of reviewing photographs and trying to estimate the dollar value of each item.

“The reality is this is state funding that comes with a lot of requirements,” she said. “Our work is to be creative with the families and be on their side but even that takes time.”

Monterey County set up an assistance center in a community park this past spring to help residents apply for the aid, DiNovella said. But Danielle Rivera, an environmental planning professor at UC Berkeley who conducts fieldwork in the area, said many community members remain confused about where the state aid is going and how to benefit. And some, she said, may have moved away before they got any help.

“People were displaced from the floods – they were renting and the landlord said ‘This unit’s out of commission.’ Then that household tries to find housing somewhere else and maybe they came back to Pajaro, maybe they went to Watsonville, maybe they just left the Pajaro Valley entirely,” she said.

Residents in both communities who were undocumented could also qualify for a statewide Storm Assistance for Immigrants program, aimed at helping California flood victims who were ineligible for federal emergency assistance. The $95 million statewide program for storm victims offered a flat stipend of $1,500 per qualifying adult. 

Millions in additional aid from philanthropic groups, private insurance and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has also poured into Pajaro since the floods, county officials said — though residents’ ability to access that help varied based on whether they were homeowners or legal U.S. residents.

In Planada, North said the county had nearly completed distributing funds for replacement of lost vehicles, personal property and business assets, and was moving on to help with home repair. That work “takes more time as it’s dependent upon certain detailed inspections for issues like mold, foundation damage, asbestos testing, and could require structural engineering in some cases,” he said by email. 

Infrastructure projects are also moving forward, North said, though more slowly. The county has replaced a backup generator for the local community services district that failed during the floods, and is commissioning a study on how to prevent future inundations.

Half of Pajaro’s $20 million is earmarked for infrastructure and emergency preparedness projects, and Monterey County spokesperson Nick Pasculli said the county had requested bids for about half the projects.

DiNovella, whose organization also worked with families displaced by the 2020 fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains, said that communities often take years to recover from disasters and that the pace of aid in Pajaro, while slow, is sadly par for the course. The most recent batch of aid, while delayed, will give families a boost during the slow winter season when many farmworkers are barely scraping by, she said.

One Pajaro resident who got state help is Jesús Padilla, who’s lived in the town for 25 years, working the strawberry and blackberry harvests. When the floods hit, he and his family just had time to grab the three children’s birth certificates and run. They lost everything – furniture, clothes, kitchenware.

Now, he worries most about his family’s physical and mental health. Every time it rains, his children ask him, “If it keeps raining more, where will we go?”

His family had already replaced many of their belongings, but the state grant that Catholic Charities helped him obtain reimbursed some of their expenses. He has friends who are still waiting for help.

He tells them to be patient – “It seems like the process is working. Just slowly.”

For the record: An earlier version of this story misstated the timing of the storms that flooded Planada and Pajaro.

In 2019, Alexis Rowberry was living in a Fresno County homeless shelter with her two kids, recently out of what she described as an abusive relationship. “We had nothing,” she said.

She found herself at the Fresno County Department of Social Services, staring at a flier.

“They had something up on the wall about trades,” said Rowberry, now 40. “It wasn’t there the day before, and it wasn’t there the day after. It just happened to be there that day. And I told my [social] worker that I wanted to do this program.”

She tried signing up, but she was denied — against policy, she later discovered — because she was a single mother without housing. In desperation, she contacted the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union, where a sympathetic secretary helped connect her with an alternative: ValleyBuild, a pre-apprenticeship program that prepares Californians for careers in the skilled trades.

“That six weeks — it was only six weeks, but it changed my life,” said Rowberry, who has been working as an electrician since graduating the program in late 2019. “It changed my life.”

ValleyBuild was born out of the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board in 2011 with the goal of helping economically disadvantaged Californians, including women and people who have had contact with the criminal justice system, enter the state’s growing trades industry and potentially reach the middle class.

In 2020, after a transportation-focused California senate bill allocated funds to workforce training programs, the state awarded ValleyBuild $1.56 million from the state which the organization used to expand into 13 more counties across the Central Valley. The program has trained roughly 1,000 people since its founding.

The construction and trade industry is “a growth sector by all empirical standards” in the Central Valley, said Blake Konczal, executive director of the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board. Data from a board-commissioned study show a projected $24 billion in public infrastructure expenditures between 2026 and 2031, as compared to about $22 billion between 2020 and 2025.

It wasn’t always that way: Construction was historically a “hidden” industry compared to agriculture in the Central Valley, Konczal said. But in 2010, a regional economic outlook report came back showing approved public infrastructure construction would be worth about $40 billion through the next decade. High-speed rail, slated to eventually run from San Francisco to Los Angeles, would add an additional boost; state data show the project has created nearly 12,000 jobs so far, mostly in the Central Valley and mostly union.

Konczal’s team saw an opportunity for locals, particularly those in precarious economic positions, to ride the wave. Although the region’s poverty rates are on the lower end of California’s spectrum because of housing costs, Central Valley poverty would be about 14 points higher than it is today without safety net programs, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

“If the worker comes from L.A. or the Bay Area, they might be renting a motel room here with four or five colleagues, and they might be going to Denny’s, but we don’t get the full benefit of keeping that money in our local economy — and the social stability that’s created when hardworking people have access to jobs that allow them to feed their children, buy a house, maybe take a vacation,” Konczal said.

Funded by five state and regional grants totaling about $16 million, ValleyBuild’s approach is straightforward. Participants are trained in a six to 10-week multi-craft core curriculum, which introduces them to different trades and prepares them for years-long apprenticeships. The potential payoff is big, with California trades offering six-figure incomes with benefits, pensions, and union membership.

The program has maintained a 98% graduation rate through its expansion, in part because it tries to “knock out all the barriers in the enrollment,” said Ashley Mattthews, senior project coordinator at the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board. That includes reimbursing participants for gas mileage or bus services, and even expenses such as car repairs or drivers’ license application fees.

A recent $1.4 million grant from the California Department of Industrial Relations has meanwhile allowed ValleyBuild to provide stipends for childcare support, which will “open the doors for more women to even see this as a viable option for them,” Matthews said. Organizations across the state are similarly looking to increase the numbers of women in the skilled trades.

Outside Fresno, counties included in the 2020 expansion have customized the program for their own needs. In Kern, home to more than a dozen active oil fields, many tradespeople work on heavy industrial sites, said Alissa Reed, executive secretary of the Kern, Inyo, Mono Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. All ValleyBuild pre-apprentices in Kern complete OSHA’s Hazardous Waste and Emergency Response or “HAZWOPER 40,” which teaches them to respond to the release of hazardous material.

The Kern program plans to double its annual participants from about 50 to 100 in anticipation of more renewable energy-related jobs over the next decade. But the county is also closely watching for political shifts — including a potential Trump presidency — that could affect the market for the skilled trades, particularly tax credits, government subsidies and funding for renewable technology, Reed said.

“If we don’t see the jobs, then we will slow down,” Reed said. Kern has maintained a 100% apprenticeship placement rate for its last two cohorts. “We are not in the business of training people to train them.”

For Rowberry, the electrician, entering the trades out of homelessness felt like the last option. Her associate’s degree in accounting had failed to provide more than minimum wage job opportunities. Before ValleyBuild, she wasn’t even able to attend the welding class she’d signed up for because her car died.

Five years later, making nearly $40 an hour plus health insurance and a pension, “I don’t worry about if my car breaks down, because I can afford to fix it,” Rowberry said. “I’ve got $5,000 in savings, and I’m investing. I never would have imagined being able to do that before.”

She helped her son’s father to join ValleyBuild after he left prison, and he’s now several years into a successful sheet metal apprenticeship. The duo are not a couple, but their careers have helped them to build a strong coparenting relationship, providing their kids access to bigger necessities such as mental health care along with small luxuries like massages or drinks from Dutch Bros Coffee.

“We did it,” Rowberry said. “My daughter stopped and looked at me the other day and she said, ‘Mom, you know what? I am so proud of you. You have come so far.’ Oh my gosh, we cried.”

Lea esta historia en Español

In 30 years in America, Alejandro Gamez took any job he could as an undocumented worker — at fast food restaurants, factories and car washes and driving trucks, even when conditions were poor. 

“I had no status,” he said. “I had no options.”

But after speaking up in 2017 about unpaid wages at an Inglewood car wash, his fortunes changed. As part of a state investigation into that employer’s labor practices, Gamez this year became eligible for four years of protection from deportation — and a temporary work permit that seemed to open doors overnight. The 51-year-old Hawthorne resident said he can apply for better, stable jobs that pay more and provide benefits. He now has a union-represented position in a college kitchen and a Social Security number to build his credit.

“It changed my life,” he said in Spanish. “It is giving me many job opportunities, to be better financially and to give a better life to my family.”

His opportunities are thanks to a recent federal program that grants temporary legal status to workers involved in certain labor investigations. With some of the nation’s strictest workplace laws but widespread concerns of employer retaliation, California has issued more than 200 requests to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, asking it to grant legal status to workers who report violations. 

But just months after Gamez got his reprieve, the program may be on the chopping block: President-elect Donald Trump and his advisors have vowed mass deportations, a return to workplace immigration raids and the repeal of similar temporary protection programs. 

Gamez’s attorney, Yvonne Medrano, said she’s expecting the program to be axed soon after Trump takes office Jan. 20. Her firm, the Los Angeles-based Bet Tzedek Legal Services, is no longer pursuing new cases under the program after representing workers seeking protections in 15 different workplace investigations.

“Removing this protection will return workers to a time when they fear deportation for asking for minimum wage, their paychecks or any other protections they have,” Medrano said.

Other immigration attorneys in California had already stopped filing new applications before Election Day. They said they expect Homeland Security to honor the four-year reprieves that the department has already granted, but are uncertain what happens next. 

“This is a discretionary program,” said Jessie Hahn, senior counsel for labor and employment policy at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group. “We are not anticipating that if Trump were elected he would continue the program.” 

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about his intentions for the program.

It has created another group of immigrants who have been granted temporary permission to be in the United States as the chances of a federal immigration overhaul have grown ever slimmer — making their prospects heavily dependent on the see-saw of each presidential administration. 

The program, one of several Biden administration efforts to boost the enforcement of labor laws, aims to give state investigators easier access to witnesses who may otherwise fear reprisal for making workplace complaints. 

It’s similar to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that gave work permits and temporary deportation protections to immigrants who had been brought to the U.S. without authorization as children. About 500,000 residents have that form of legal status, but the program has stopped granting new applications after challenges in the federal courts. Trump tried to rescind the program in his last term; Stephen Miller, a close Trump advisor, said he will do so again, the New York Times has reported.

Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement is much narrower — 7,700 workers have benefitted since January 2023. Anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen can apply if they can prove they were working for an employer under investigation. First, a state or federal labor agency must submit a letter to Homeland Security saying they need the cooperation of worker witnesses in each investigation. 

Those granted deferred action are shielded from deportation and allowed to work legally for four years, but there is no path toward permanent residency. Some recipients see it as a way to earn money legally and get better-paying jobs outside the underground economy. Others said it gives them time — and a much quicker path to a work permit — as their other immigration-related cases wind their way through the federal bureaucracy.

Immigration attorneys and advocates say while some applicants are seeking reprieves from active deportation cases, most have been living and working without papers undetected, meaning they’ve come forward to federal immigration authorities for the first time. 

It’s not clear how many of those workers are in California. A Homeland Security spokesperson would not release state-by-state figures, citing “ongoing investigations.”

But California is an eager participant in the program; Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration says it was the first state to file a letter supporting worker protections. The state is home to nearly 1.5 million workers who are undocumented immigrants, making up more than 7% of the workforce. 

Such workers are a frequent focus of the state’s labor investigations, and labor advocates say undocumented workers routinely fear both losing their jobs and being reported to immigration authorities for complaining about workplace violations. 

“This fear can prevent them from fully cooperating with labor enforcement agencies in reporting and corroborating violations of the law,” Daniel Lopez, spokesperson for the state Labor Commissioner’s Office, said in a statement. “Ultimately, fewer protections undermine workers and impact responsible employers.”

In the past two years, the office, which investigates wage theft, has sent letters supporting deportation protections in 136 workplace investigations covering potentially hundreds of workers. The Division of Occupational Safety and Health has sent at least 12 letters. The Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which oversees farmworkers’ rights, has sent 10, and the Civil Rights Department, which investigates workplace discrimination complaints, has sent 60, spokespersons said.

The state has even paid to help immigrants get work permits. Last year, Newsom announced $4.5 million to pay for free legal services to help farmworkers who are involved in labor investigations apply for deferred action. The money, allocated through mid-2026, has so far helped screen more than 500 workers for eligibility and 175 apply for the program. 

There are as many as 800,000 seasonal and year-round farmworkers in California; at least half are believed to be undocumented.

“Agricultural regions have very limited access to immigration legal services,” said Jason Montiel, spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, which administers the grant to five legal aid groups statewide. “Providing farmworkers direct access to immigration legal services when their labor rights are violated increases the likelihood that they will file labor claims and collaborate with labor agencies.”

Newsom’s spokespersons did not respond to an inquiry about what will happen with the state grant program if federal rules change.

Nicole Gorney, a supervising attorney with VIDAS Legal Services, which is receiving a state grant, said that she has 12 farmworker clients waiting to be granted deferred action. She had hoped the state would expand the program to include workers in other industries. 

“There are still a lot of workers out there who may qualify but really don’t want to come out of the shadows,” she said the morning after the election.

Gamez’ deferred action was granted in connection with retaliation claims he and his coworkers filed against Century Car Wash in 2018. That year, they had also filed wage theft claims with the state Labor Commissioner’s Office. According to state records, they told the office their managers made them show up earlier and leave later than the businesses’ opening hours, but their time-sheets didn’t match all the hours they worked. The car wash’s co-owners denied the claims, and told the state the time-sheets were accurate. 

After demanding payment from his managers, Gamez said he was fired, and told to leave in front of customers. According to state records, he and his coworkers won the wage claims in 2021; a state hearing officer ruled Gamez was owed more than $20,000. But the state is still investigating claims the workers were fired and questioned about their immigration status in retaliation for speaking up. Last year at Gamez’ attorney’s request, the Labor Commissioner’s Office sent a letter to Homeland Security to request deportation protection for the workers. 

“The ongoing investigation … is being conducted by our Retaliation Complaint Investigation unit and requires worker cooperation and testimony,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower wrote in the letter. 

Reached by phone, one of Century Car Wash’s owners deferred to the co-owner, who did not respond to a request for comment. 

Gamez said his deferred action status kept him calm last week as many immigrants feared for their futures under a second Trump administration. 

Others who received the protection remain afraid. 

Alejandra Montoya came to the United States five years ago fleeing “problems in the family,” she said, and found work in the Central Valley’s fields. She had a degree in business administration in her native Mexico, and said she never intended to be an undocumented immigrant. But she had a son, and stayed to raise him in Bakersfield. 

Montoya said she enjoys farm work, despite the hard days on her hands and knees picking and bunching carrots for $3.05 per box. On a good day, when the field conditions are forgiving, she can take home $150 or more, she said. 

Working for a contractor hired by Grimmway Farms, she said she kept her head down, until one day last September when a coworker, Rosa Sanchez, was struck by a truck and killed in the field next to hers. Montoya said workers had raised concerns about that driver and she believed the accident was preventable. Some of the workers were told to keep working around Sanchez’ body, she said. Stunned, and now knowing what else to do, she did. 

It was “traumatic,” she said through a translator. “Inhumane.”

In March, the state’s workplace safety agency issued more than $65,000 of citations against Grimmway, the contractor Esparza Enterprises and another contractor that employed the driver, alleging serious safety violations for allowing employees to work “in close proximity to a Commercial Truck being driven in an unsafe manner,” according to files obtained through a public records request. Federal and state records show the driver was backing up when the truck struck Sanchez.

The company and its contractors have contested the citations. Esparza did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Grimmway spokesperson Dana Brennan wrote the company has strict policies prohibiting retaliation against employees or contractors’ employees who report issues at work. 

“We have a confidential, anonymous, bilingual hotline where employees can report ethical concerns,” Brennan wrote. “As we have since we first learned of this tragic accident, we are committed to working with authorities throughout their investigation and extend our deepest sympathies to Ms. Sanchez’s family and her co-workers on this grievous loss.”

As a potential witness to the accident, Montoya applied for deferred action with the help of the United Farm Workers, and has since become more active with the organization, encouraging coworkers to apply and speaking at a union convention in September. 

The day after the election, she said she’s both relieved she got her work permit this year and fearful that she’s given her information to federal immigration authorities. In the fields, most of the workers were talking about Trump’s victory, “about what will happen with us now.”

“It protects us from deportation,” she said of the program. “Even so, the fear exists … Whenever he wants, he can take it away.”

A ballot proposition to raise California’s minimum wage to $18 an hour has been rejected by voters, even as the state continues to grapple with its high cost of living.

The Associated Press called the race Tuesday after two weeks of ballot counting. Nearly 51% of voters said “no” in a rejection that opponents on Monday called “historic.” 

Proposition 32 would have raised the state minimum wage to $17 for the rest of the year, and then $18 in January for large employers. Smaller employers — those with 25 or fewer workers — would have been required to pay at least $17 in January and at least $18 in January 2026. 

The state’s minimum wage is already tied to inflation: The lowest-paid workers will still get a 50-cent raise to $16.50 in January. For a full-time worker, that’s a little more than $34,000 a year.

The measure would have given California the highest state minimum wage in the nation. Supporters estimated it could give raises to about two million Californians who work in such industries as warehousing, restaurants, agriculture and childcare. 

But with a quieter than usual campaign in support and widespread voter frustration over inflation this election, the measure was doomed after business groups pushed back by claiming the wage hike would drive restaurant and grocery price increases. Prop. 32’s fate could signal how liberal California’s electorate remains on economic policies as the cost of living continues rising. 

“Voters know who pays for wage mandates like Proposition 32 — they do,” Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Association, said in a statement. “They’re sick of the high cost of living and they are clearly associating California’s laws and mandates as significant contributors.”

While the state has boosted pay for hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers in recent years and likely voters indicated last year that they support raising the state minimum wage to $18, recent polling showed Californians split on the measure.

Supporters said they would keep trying to raise the wage.

“We’ll continue until every California worker earns enough to live and thrive,” proponent Joe Sanberg, a startup investor and anti-poverty advocate, said in a statement. “While today’s outcome was not what we expected, we are hopeful for the work ahead.”

But labor unions, which in 2016 pushed heavily for the increases that led the state to a $15 minimum wage in 2022, are taking a different approach.

“Although we always support raising wages, this wasn’t Labor’s initiative and we played no role in the campaign,” said Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation. “Our current focus is to help unionized workers collectively bargain wage increases and to provide a path to unionization for those workers who don’t currently have one.”

What do supporters say?

The ballot proposition was sponsored by Sanberg and backed by labor unions, progressive groups and the California Democratic Party. Supporters argued the state’s lowest earners needed a boost to afford housing and other basic needs.

As the measure trailed after Election Day, supporters doubled down on arguing that raising the minimum wage is a form of economic populism.

“Of all the ballot measures that progressives were organized around, I have the most hope for Prop. 32,” said California Working Families Party leader Jane Kim. “This is our opportunity to actually provide real solutions to the economic woes people are facing.”

What do opponents say?

Prop. 32 was opposed by the state Chamber of Commerce and business groups representing the grocery, agricultural and restaurant industries. 

Business owners argued mandating pay hikes would increase food prices and worsen inflation, seizing on those concerns during a year when American consumers have remained pessimistic about the economy, despite inflation falling steadily from a pandemic-era peak. 

Why is it on the ballot?

Prop. 32 had an unusual path to the ballot. It didn’t come from the usual players in labor politics — the unions that dominate the California Democratic Party and command strong support in the Legislature. Unions were instrumental in 2016 in striking a deal with lawmakers and then-Gov. Jerry Brown to mandate a series of wage hikes that brought the state’s minimum wage up to $15 in 2022. 

Instead, Sanberg personally poured $10 million into qualifying the measure. When he announced the measure late in 2021, a hike to $18 appeared ambitious. But by the time the proposition made it to the 2024 ballot, California unions and lawmakers had already outpaced it. 

A $20 minimum wage for fast food workers went into effect this April. The healthcare industry in October also began raising pay for a scheduled minimum wage hike to $25. Los Angeles hotel workers are seeking a $30 minimum wage by the 2028 Olympics. 

For everyone else, the state minimum wage continued to rise with inflation, reaching $16 this year. 

Supporters said those left behind still deserve to earn more. According to researchers at MIT, a single Californian with no children needs at least $27 an hour to be self-sufficient. 

But with far fewer workers in line for a raise under Prop. 32, the campaign for the measure was met with less fanfare and public support than initially envisioned. Union leaders, while backing the measure, said $18 can hardly be considered a living wage in California today. 

Sanberg and proponents have said the measure is simple and attractive enough to most voters that they did not need to blanket the state with ads or spend big on a formal campaign. But in the final weeks of the election, as polling showed its chances of passage falling, they said they’re reaching out to working class voters and those in big cities, to turn out likely supporters. 

Lea esta historia en Español

Ciara Lambright has a lot to worry about: Staying safe while living on the streets of San Francisco, trying to prevent people from stealing her belongings, and packing up her small cardboard bed before it gets swept away by police. 

The thought of voting this election is just too overwhelming.

“It’s just not top on my list right now,” said 33-year-old Lambright. 

Homelessness is arguably the biggest problem facing California today, it’s a top concern for voters and it’s on the ballot, either directly or indirectly, in nearly every city. 

But all too often, what homeless Californians, themselves, have to say about the issue isn’t getting heard. 

That’s because while eligible voters can still cast ballots if they are experiencing homelessness, they face a mountain of obstacles, according to elections officials, service providers and potential voters who live on the street. 

California’s homeless population has ballooned to nearly 186,000 people this year, so that means one part of the electorate is potentially not taking part in democracy this election. Experts say that’s cause for concern, as many contests — statewide rent control and criminal justice reform propositions, local mayoral races and more — could directly affect unhoused residents.

“Their lives are the central topic of political conversation, and it’s a conversation that they are often left out of,” said Niki Jones, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness.

There are some efforts underway, both by counties and by local nonprofits, to boost voting among unhoused communities. But those attempts are far from universal. Of 15 unhoused residents interviewed this month by CalMatters in three cities, just three planned to vote and knew how to do so this election. 

Tyneeka Bland, a 42-year-old Modesto native who moved to Sacramento earlier this year, said she lived on the streets for two months and stayed at a shelter for another six before she finally found housing in Natomas last month. That prompted her to register to vote with her new address. She mailed in her ballot last Thursday, she said. 

But Bland said she missed the March primary when she was still unhoused, because she was unaware that she could vote even without a permanent address.

“I didn’t have no address, so how am I going to be able to vote? How am I going to be able to have a voice if I’m … not on the map somewhere?” Bland asked. 

Californians without a fixed address where ballots can be mailed can register to vote using the address of a shelter, or the cross street of the park, street or sidewalk where they spend the night. They can use a P.O. box or business address to receive mail, but not to register.

Voters without a way to get a mail-in ballot have to go to a polling place in person. That can be difficult for reasons including lack of transportation, fear that their belongings will be stolen if they leave their campsite, limited access to voting information, and many other pressing needs facing unhoused people.

Only about 10% of homeless Americans vote each year, according to a 2012 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“When you are not sure where your next meal is coming from, and you’re having to think about where you’re going to sleep tonight, that makes it very difficult to remember that it’s also voting day,” Jones said. 

It’s also more difficult to stay informed about elections when you’re living on the street. Housed Californians get bombarded by political ads on TV, hear reporters discuss ballot measures on the radio and see campaign mailers flood their mailboxes. Homeless Californians without a TV, consistent access to the internet or radio and no mailing address often are left in the dark. 

The news that Oakland’s mayor is facing a recall election this year didn’t make it to 63-year-old Ashby Dancy, who was hanging out with two friends at a small tent encampment in East Oakland on a recent afternoon. 

Ajda Latimer, who lives in an RV in West Oakland with her two dogs, Damien and Angel, thought she was barred from voting because she doesn’t have an address. When a reporter told her she could vote anyway, she said she’ll try to cast a ballot.

“It does matter to me,” she said. 

Some unhoused Californians CalMatters spoke with mistakenly believed their prior felony convictions prevent them from voting. People with a felony conviction can vote in California, as long as they aren’t currently serving time for that offense. 

Others are disheartened by a political system that they say never seems to take people living on the street into consideration. Donald Trump or Kamala Harris for president? It doesn’t really matter to 52-year-old Linda Vazquez, who sleeps outside in San Francisco. 

“Neither one of them is doing anything that’s going to work for us,” she said. 

Melanie Mercado, who said she has lived on the streets in Sacramento for more than a decade, told CalMatters she only voted once in her life — for Barack Obama. But, Mercado said, she has no trust in the government in part because she lost custody to her daughter in a court fight, in which she saw a system “conspiring against” her.

“I don’t think that voting helps decide your own fate,” Mercado said. “How many rulers of the environment do you need?”

In Sacramento, the Regional Coalition to End Homelessness is partnering with Sacramento State University to help encourage more unhoused people to vote. Using a $7,500 grant from the Robert Nelson Foundation, they have been hosting voter registration ice cream socials at homeless shelters, transitional housing sites and outside the county jail. 

About 150 people had shown up to their events as of mid-October, and 30 of those had registered to vote, Jones said. Those who already are registered get information about what’s on the ballot and where to vote. Outreach workers help people make a plan to vote, such as choosing a “voting buddy” who can help remind them to vote and hold them accountable to actually cast their ballot. 

“Folks really do care about the politics that affect their lives,” Jones said. 

Sacramento County also is trying to bridge the gap by hosting voter registration drives at local homeless shelters and affordable housing developments. In addition to registering people to vote (they got 14 new registrants at one event in mid-October) county staff hand out fliers with information about where to vote, and tell people how to access the county’s online voter information guide, said county spokesperson Ken Casparis. 

Sometimes people have to re-register, because if their ballot gets mailed to their old address and returned as undeliverable, their voting status changes to “inactive,” Casparis said.

“It is a process,” he said, “but we do do our best to get out there and do as much outreach to that community as we can.” 

There are a little more than 600 homeless registered voters in Sacramento County, Casparis said. But the county doesn’t know how many of them end up voting.

There are more than 6,600 homeless people living in Sacramento County, according to the latest point-in-time count. That means about 9% of all unhoused Sacramento residents are registered to vote. Among the general population, nearly 79% of eligible residents were registered as of last year, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Not every county tracks those numbers. San Diego County, for example, has no way of tracking how many of its homeless residents register to vote or vote, according to Antonia Hutzell, a spokesperson for the registrar of voters. 

Alliance San Diego, a community organization, has been distributing voter guides to local homeless shelters to boost voter turnout, said executive director Andrea Guerrero. The organization also is reaching unhoused people via Facebook, email and text messages.

But for someone like 39-year-old Nanie Crossman, who lives in an RV parked on the street in West Oakland, voting isn’t as easy as simply looking up her polling place, and then going there.

First, she would have to find a place to shower and a clean change of clothes. Otherwise, her presence might garner nasty looks from the other voters, Crossman said. 

Will she end up voting, come Election Day? It depends on her mood, Crossman said. 

“Plans are hard to keep out here,” she said. “If you make plans, something will happen.”

Native American children in California’s foster care system are frequently placed in non-relative, non-native homes. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, ensuring child welfare agencies investigate ancestry, contested cases still emerge. This story explores the long-standing issues and the ongoing fight to protect Native foster care rights in California. Read the full story.

As climate change drives dangerous heatwaves, California’s inland communities like Lancaster, Palmdale, and Fresno are experiencing more high-heat days, putting thousands at risk for heat-related illnesses. A recent report shows these cities, popular for affordable housing, are unprepared for rising temperatures. By 2050, they could see over 25 extreme heat days annually, up from single digits. Read the full story.

Lea esta historia en Español

Every other week Laurel LaMont walks one block from her Temecula apartment to City Hall to make the case for a new model for low income housing. 

She and her organization, Upward Community, have been calling on the city to create a community land trust, a nonprofit that buys land, then rents or sells homes to low- and moderate income residents. 

But first, LaMont has a more pressing issue; she’s fighting her own eviction from an affordable apartment after her earnings rose above the building’s threshold for subsidized housing.

LaMont’s vision — and her own dilemma — show how the statewide housing crisis has made home ownership, and even rent, unaffordable to many working people.

“For all of time we’ve always had a lesser earning workforce that keeps your community going — your grocers, your baristas, janitors and cooks,” said LaMont, who works at Trader Joe’s. “These are permanent jobs, and we deserve to live in a community we serve.”

Housing prices in California are some of the highest in the country. More than half of tenants spend more than 30% of their income on rent, the Public Policy Institute of California reported.

California homes sold in September for a median price of $868,150, according to the California Association of Realtors. 

Even in Riverside County, long regarded as a haven for reasonably priced housing, the median price was $625,000 last month. It would take an annual income of nearly $160,000 — or $77 an hour —  with a 10% down payment to buy such a home in Temecula, according to Wells Fargo’s mortgage calculator.

The missing middle

For years LaMont has fought for better options for what she calls the “missing middle,” often referred to as workforce housing. 

“There’s no starter homes,” said LaMont, a single mom. “There’s no opening door for the lesser earning, or the single earner.”

Community land trusts offer that entryway to homeownership, she argues. 

Under the model, a nonprofit purchases land and builds homes for lease or sale at stable monthly rates. In the for-sale version residents can buy a home, but not the land, which is restricted to low- or moderate-income housing for up to 99 years. If they leave, residents may take limited equity to their next home. 

LaMont formed her organization, Upward Community, in 2020 with Melissa Bourbonnais, a political science professor, and Aaron Cook, a civil engineer.  They’re trying to raise the money needed to form a 501C3 nonprofit, which would enable it to seek grants for a community land trust, LaMont said. 

The organization is pressing the city to get on board. With a blonde pixie cut and quick smile, LaMont appears disarming but acknowledges she and her fellow activists can be “abrasive” in political exchanges.

“We go to every single council meeting and we do not go in gently,” she said. “Every Tuesday we just walk on up there and give them an earful.”

She has made headway with some council members. Mayor Pro Tem Brenden Kalfus said he thinks a community land trust could be useful in Temecula. 

“I don’t think it’s the solution to the housing crisis, but it helps go in the right direction,” he said. “I think the community land trust gives the community local control.”

Various city-owned parcels could be used for that purpose, Kalfus said. He leans toward townhomes or small single-family homes with limited equity over condos or apartments.

“I think that would best serve the workforce in Temecula,” Kalfus said. “When you go to sell the home, you can’t make more than a certain amount, so it keeps the price reasonable.”

Temecula’s big homes

City officials are working with legal counsel and a consultant to analyze the community land trust model, said Matt Peters, director of community development, in an email to CalMatters. The city also would need a nonprofit organization to administer the trust, a partnership with a real estate developer and financial resources to accomplish it, he added.

Councilmember Zak Schwank said “all options are on the table” for expanding housing in Temecula. But he said the city already works with Habitat for Humanity, and he thinks that’s an efficient way to build low-income homes. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage.

Schwank worries that a community land trust would require city administration, creating new bureaucracy.

“We would have to have a whole other structure in place, with oversight and partners, so I wonder if it’s just cleaner to continue to invest in Habitat homes and things like that,” he said.

Temecula is known for its large, suburban homes, but Schwank said city officials have tried to persuade developers to downsize housing tracts and build entry-level homes.

“We have tried to be more creative with developers, to incentivize them to build the missing middle, or those smaller lot homes,” he said. “We haven’t been too successful with that.”

To spur home construction, the city has rezoned some areas, Schwank said. For instance, it retooled its specific plan for an area called Uptown Temecula to accommodate 3,700 more housing units and streamlined the approval process to make it easy to build new homes there. 

A city zoning map over her bed

Meanwhile LaMont’s own housing situation has taken on new urgency. In July she received an eviction notice after her take-home pay rose to $52,000, exceeding the annual affordable program limit of $49,000 for a two-person household. She got extensions through October, but now she has to move. She said she faces a rent increase from the current $935 she pays per month to more than twice that rate.

LaMont’s apartment in the Warehouse at Creekside is small but tightly organized. Her 19-year-old son Christopher uses a bunk bed in the single bedroom, while LaMont sleeps in the living room on a bed raised for storage underneath. There’s no pantry, so a bookshelf stores packages of Trader Joe’s baking mix, olives and chicken broth. 

A zoning map of Temecula hangs over LaMont’s bed, and shelves next to it are stacked with books on urban planning.

“My unhealthy habit is reading government documents and learning about housing,” she said.

Christopher said his family’s tenuous situation seemed normal when he was a child, but he later realized housing was a struggle. For his high school senior project he presented a design for a walkable, pedestrian-friendly community in Temecula. Now he’s attending Mount San Jacinto Community College with the goal of becoming a civil engineer. 

“I’m just starting to understand there’s no salvation for me if I don’t make it on my own,” he said.

A broken system

City officials say they’re aware of LaMont’s situation and are exploring ways to adjust the income criteria for her building. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines low-income renters as people earning less than 80% of an area’s median income. In the Inland Empire that’s $65,600 a year for a two-person household, well above LaMont’s earnings. 

But the income criteria can vary by project. The Warehouse at Creekside restricts tenants to 60% of the area median for one-bedrooms, putting LaMont just above the threshold. City officials said they’re working with the developer to renegotiate that limit.

It won’t change  in time to save LaMont’s lease. She has found a two-bedroom apartment that will open in a few months. It will allow her and her son their own space, but it will double her rent. She worked out a deal to stay in a different apartment in her current building in the interim.

Even with a potential solution, she laments that affordable housing formulas create a trap that penalizes tenants for improving their financial station. She said that’s what causes the “brokenness” of the affordable housing system.

“You’re constantly chasing; there’s no hope of saving any money,” she said. 

This story was made possible in part by a grant from the CIELO Fund of the Inland Empire Community Foundation.