What California's Latino Leaders Want From Xavier Becerra

LOS ANGELES — Latino advocacy groups are stepping up a pressure campaign on Xavier Becerra, urging California’s likely next governor to expand protections and benefits for undocumented immigrants and make them harder for future administrations to unwind.

A coalition of more than four dozen Latino advocates from across the state has advanced a sweeping policy agenda, including proposals to constitutionally guarantee health care regardless of immigration status and expand access to state benefits and services. Now, with Becerra poised to become California's first Latino governor in modern history, the coalition and its allies in the Legislature are pressing him to make those ideas a defining part of his administration.

“We don't want to be an afterthought,” said Latino Caucus Chair and Democratic state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, who told POLITICO she is “open to supporting” a constitutional amendment and backs the group’s broader agenda. “We're almost half of the population. We should be a priority, along with many other diverse communities too.”

Advocates from the Ad Hoc Latino Leaders Group held meetings and informal talks with gubernatorial candidates and their campaigns — including Becerra’s — earlier in the year. Now, they’re seeking a follow-up meeting to discuss the proposals in more detail, said Seciah Aquino, executive director of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California.

Even if Becerra agrees with the coalition’s goals, its most ambitious proposals would require him to spend significant political capital to sway moderate Democrats wary of multibillion-dollar commitments amid the state’s budget challenges.

Still, Aquino said Becerra’s record and ties to the Latino community give the group reason to believe he’d champion the agenda.

“We are really counting on him to come in ready to fight that fight,” Aquino said.

The boldest of the proposals is a constitutional right to health care regardless of immigration status, with an annual spending floor modeled after California's constitutionally protected school funding guarantee. It would require Becerra and lawmakers to commit billions of dollars to services that have already faced resistance at the Capitol.

The leaders are also calling for greater representation in gubernatorial appointments, more transparency in the selection process and expanded access to state services and protections for undocumented immigrants. While California provides children’s services, public education and some treatment programs regardless of immigration status, many undocumented immigrants in California remain ineligible for food aid, housing and cash assistance programs. Available state-funded programs for immigrants also have added stricter eligibility requirements.

Sonja Diaz, founder of policy nonprofit Unseen and a leader of the group, said dividing benefits between the “deserving and undeserving” is “nonsensical” for a healthy democracy.

Yet the pressure campaign faces two broader realities — years of projected shortfalls and a recent federal change that would allow federal officials to penalize immigrants applying for permanent residency for using public benefits.

Becerra, who is overwhelmingly favored to win November’s election against Republican Steve Hilton in this heavily Democratic state, has championed immigrant health care access from his time in Congress to his tenure as California attorney general, where he challenged a similar public benefits rule under the first Trump administration. In the nascent days of his gubernatorial campaign, he slammed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts to Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrants, decrying the move as “pennywise and pound foolish.”

In a statement to POLITICO, Becerra campaign spokesperson Jonathan Underland said, “Xavier Becerra passed the ACA and defended it at the Supreme Court — he knows keeping people healthy and out of the ER protects families without burdening taxpayers.”

The campaign would not say whether Becerra supported the idea of a constitutional amendment.

Advocates acknowledge that even a sympathetic governor won’t be enough. German Cash, California state director for the Hispanic Federation and coalition leader, said the advocates are relying on Gonzalez and the Latino Caucus to rally support for the policies as lawmakers contend with fiscal constraints. He argues that stricter regulations from Washington only strengthen the case for California to lead.

“The urgency is there, and I do think that regardless of how hard it may be, the consequences of not doing it are so much greater,” Cash said.

Some of the advocates now pressing Becerra on policy also helped to build his political coalition.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, said members began to line up behind Becerra early — before he became the frontrunner — because he consistently attended CHIRLA events and spent time speaking with them.

“All those people, mostly within the Latino community, they weren't listening to the polls, they weren't being told by the Democratic Party about who was the chosen elected,” Salas said.

Salas said Becerra’s one-on-one conversations with immigrant members throughout the campaign — often in fluent Spanish — energized volunteers and solidified his ties to Los Angeles’ immigrant community. CHIRLA’s lobbying arm endorsed him in April, and Latino organizations later rallied to his defense when opponents attacked his record as HHS secretary on the placements of unaccompanied migrant children.

“Our members would say it's so good to be able to talk to somebody who understands you in your own language,” Salas said. “There's no translation. There's no in between. This person understands me, listens to me, gets me, can respond to my questions in my language.”

The campaign also leaned into Becerra’s biography as a first-generation Mexican American by launching Spanish-only TikToks and later embracing the nickname “Tío Xavier.”

That message may have resonated with young Latino voters, whose turnout jumped more than any other group from the 2022 primaries, said Matt Barreto, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Barreto said Becerra’s identity gave voters a “starting point” to explore his political record.

Now, advocates are shifting their focus to the next administration. Cash said the team is preparing to try “all the levers possible” to advance immigrant-friendly policies — through the Legislature, executive orders or ballot initiatives. Putting a constitutional amendment before voters, he said, remains the ultimate goal.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez said the administration should appoint officials who understand the policy needs of California’s Latino communities in a time of mounting attacks from the federal government. The commitment, the state senator said, should go beyond making a few appointments and being “good for the year.”

“We still have all these other issues, like ethnic studies,” Gonzalez said. “We've got immigration enforcement bills that need fast tracking. We have investments, deep investments, even outside of immigration, that need to be attended to.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, who became the first Latino to represent California in the U.S. Senate after serving as the state’s first Latino secretary of state, declined to say if he supported the idea of enshrining health care for immigrants in the state constitution. But Padilla said the proposal itself is an example of how far Latino advocates have come politically since Proposition 187 three decades ago, when California voters sought to deny immigrants basic public services.

Becerra’s election would be a “point of pride” for the state’s Latinos, he said. But symbolism alone won’t improve the lives of working families.

“Yeah, that’s worth celebrating. But that in and of itself doesn’t improve anybody’s life,” Padilla said. “It’s what we do with the opportunity that has the potential to improve people’s lives.”