California leaders claim to value immigrants while rolling back Medi-Cal coverage | Opinion

Images of military-style U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Oxnard last month shocked the nation’s conscience. Here on the Central Coast, the deep, aching pain of families torn apart is still deep in our bones. Fear has forced families into hiding, leaving classrooms, neighborhoods, barrios, fields and warehouses eerily silent.

These raids didn’t just create disruption, they shattered a fragile sense of safety, replacing it with terror, confusion and grief. They also sparked a powerful outcry, including from top state leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, Senate President pro Tempore Mike McGuire and our own incoming Senate Leader Monique Limón, who all forcefully condemned these immigration raids.

While I welcome their words, I couldn’t help but feel the contradiction: At the same time these state leaders were speaking out against the harm of these raids, they were pushing forward policy and budget proposals that will take health care coverage, food access and culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services away from many of the same immigrants they claim to stand with.

Having spent the last decade advocating for immigrant and Indigenous families — families who work long, backbreaking hours in the fields to feed the nation — I know that access to health care is life or death. We know what happens when care is denied: The average life expectancy for a farm worker in the United States is just 49 years. That number should shock us all.

Just two years ago, we celebrated alongside immigrant communities when Newsom signed a historic expansion of Medi-Cal to include all low-income adults, regardless of immigration status. It was a victory that took a decade of organizing, and it meant everything — it was life-affirming.

Now, that hard-fought progress has been set back. State leaders passed, and Newsom has signed, a budget balanced on the backs of immigrants.

As of Jan. 1, 2026 the state will block new enrollments in Medi-Cal for undocumented working-age adults. Adults who are undocumented as well as some with legal status — such as those who have had a green card less than five years — will be terminated if they can’t pay new fees of $30 per adult or $60 per couple. People who already live paycheck to paycheck could be turned away at the doctor’s office or dental clinic.

A $30 monthly fee (or $60 for couples) may not sound like much in Sacramento, but for families bent over in the fields harvesting strawberries for pennies a box, it’s the difference between food and medicine. While the budget maintains coverage for immigrant children and seniors, we know whole families suffer when one family member loses care. Many parents will forgo their own care rather than take food off their children’s table if they can’t afford the new fees.

This decision isn’t just cruel, it’s shortsighted. Immigrants in California contribute an estimated $8.5 billion in state and local taxes each year. And nearly 40% of agricultural workers depend on Medi-Cal, a program that also helps stabilize the very industry that feeds this country. Cutting their care doesn’t just hurt families, it also weakens entire systems.

Let’s be honest: These actions echo the same anti-immigrant policies we fight against at the federal level.

Even before the traumatic raids a few weeks ago, we saw the result of the federal administration’s fear-mongering in fewer families seeking help and enrolling in Medi-Cal. Our team is out in the Central Coast’s agricultural fields every day, and we carry the stories of people we’ve lost: a father whose cancer was diagnosed too late, a mother whose untreated diabetes led to irreversible damage.

As Newsom and legislators implement a budget that retreats from California’s promise of Health for All, our communities have a message: You can’t say you value immigrants while stripping them of their basic right to live a healthy life. You can’t say you support farm workers while leaving them without access to basic medical care.

If we truly value immigrant lives, then we must act like it.

This story was originally published July 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "California leaders claim to value immigrants while rolling back Medi-Cal coverage | Opinion."