Staff Reports
Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for California governor, dropped a serious charge this week: he says taxpayer-funded groups tied to CHIRLA are paying illegal immigrants to canvass for Xavier Becerra. Hilton and his CalDOGE team held a press event and released a report that points to CHIRLA’s own materials and public tax filings as the source of the claim. If true, this is raw political corruption — and the public has a right to know the full story.
Hilton’s charge: taxpayer-funded canvassers in Becerra’s corner
At the heart of the allegation is CHIRLA’s Immigrant Political Power Project. The program language on CHIRLA’s site says its teams include “paid/volunteer canvassers/phone bankers, ranging in status from undocumented to lawful permanent residents,” and that they make multiple pre‑election contacts. CHIRLA Action Fund has also publicly endorsed Xavier Becerra. Hilton’s team aggregated CHIRLA’s recent grant receipts and says roughly $72 million in public money flowed into CHIRLA and affiliated entities over a few years — money he claims is being used to build a partisan get‑out‑the‑vote operation paid for by California taxpayers.
The paper trail CHIRLA left — and the firewall question
Here’s the inconvenient truth for CHIRLA: its own words describe paid canvassers who may not all have legal work authorization. Public tax filings and audited financials show big increases in government grants to CHIRLA in recent years. CHIRLA insists it legally walls off taxpayer‑funded programs from its political arm, and many nonprofits do have separate entities for advocacy. But that wall looks shakier when the same leader shows up as the public face of both operations. Voters aren’t wrong to ask whether public funds meant for services were steered into partisan activity.
Laws that could be in play — and why they matter
The legal rules here are not bedtime stories. Federal immigration law makes it unlawful to knowingly hire people who aren’t authorized to work. Campaign finance law draws a bright line between unpaid volunteer work and paid political activity, and foreign nationals can’t legally fund or be paid to influence U.S. elections. If CHIRLA or any grant‑funded program used taxpayer dollars to pay unauthorized workers for campaign work, that would raise serious immigration and election‑law questions — and potentially criminal exposure. That’s not speculation; it’s basic legal context investigators will look at.
What comes next — and what voters should demand
Right now, Hilton has raised the alarm and produced the program text and grant totals. What’s missing are the smoking‑gun documents: payroll records, contract allocations showing which dollars paid which workers, and a clear audit trail linking government grants to partisan canvassing. That’s why the next steps should be obvious — state and federal grant officers should audit the grants, CHIRLA should produce on‑the‑record payroll and accounting records, and Xavier Becerra should answer whether he’ll accept help that might be bought with public money. If Democrats want to lecture about fairness and the rule of law, they should start by making sure their allies are not skimming public funds to win an election.
California voters deserve transparency. Whether you care about immigration policy, proper use of taxpayer dollars, or honest elections, this allegation deserves a fast, public investigation — not spin, not press releases, and certainly not silence. If the charges are true, it isn’t just sloppy politics; it’s theft with a campaign sign on top. If they’re false, CHIRLA should prove it immediately and clear the record. Either way, the state needs answers.
