Assembly Select Committee on Latina Inequities

Almost afternoon. Check our microphones. Can you hear us well? Welcome to the first hearing for the Select Committee on Latina Inequities. My name is Celeste Rodriguez and I have the honor of representing the beautiful northeast San Fernando Valley where we are today.

It's an honor to chair the Select Committee and to host this first hearing in my own district, Assembly District 43. This is actually the first select Committee ever to be hosted in this Assembly district. It's so wonderful to be able to bring the work that we do in Sacramento here home to the community.

And I hope afterwards all of you who are visiting us will enjoy the local businesses. Before you go, I want to take a quick moment to explain why today's hearing and future hearings are unique in the Assembly.

We have standing committees like the Assembly Human Services Committee or the Assembly Health Committee, which my colleague mentioned up onto chairs and they have defined issue areas. And whenever we have a Bill that will impact that area, it'll be heard in those committees and we discuss topics that are pertinent to those issue areas.

Select committees, on the other hand, are an opportunity for us in the Legislature to share information with the public about a specific issue that doesn't quite fall under the jurisdiction of these existing standing committees. So today we have a special focus on Latina inequities.

This select Committee is actually in its fifth year of shedding light on the economic status of Latinas in California and bringing forth policy recommendations to address inequities and barriers that California's Latinas experience. Just this year, Governor Newsom signed SB642 by Senator Limon, which strengthens California's Equal Pay Act with greater enforcement and transparency.

This is a major effort in closing the wage gap which Latinas experience the most. It's topics and issues like that where we're going to be able to identify legislative solutions to push forward in the work we do in Sacramento.

Today's topics are centered on the impacts of the Federal Administration's policies on Latinas, the economy and the social safety net. To summarize our agenda, the first panel will examine the national economic state of Latinas. The second panel will focus on immigration enforcement impacts on the workforce and their safety.

And the third will shine a light on HR1's ripple effects on our social safety net. I'd like to thank all of you for making yourselves available today to attend this hearing.

Before we begin, I would like to thank and and welcome our gracious host, Dr. Armida Ornelas, the President of Los Angeles Mission College, who will say a few words.

Good afternoon already.

Yes.

Good morning, everyone. It's such a pleasure to see everyone. My name is Armida Ornelas, the President of LA Mission College, and it's truly our honor to host this momentous occasion, this event, because we all know it, we all feel it, we know that we are going through a difficult time.

And let me just tell you that LA Mission College is, you know, proud to serve the communities of the Northeast Valley. But, you know, we can't do it without the support of our leadership. The Assemblywoman has been amazing, has been such a strong supporter of our college.

And with support like hers, we're able to do the work that we do. We're able to stand tall and create a safe space for. For our students, we were fortunate that we were able to expand our footprint into Pacoima. We are fortunate to offer a baccalaureate degree.

We've received state monies to expand, expand our services for our dream resource center to serve our undocumented students. We've got a robust basic needs center for our students who are homeless, insecure, who are hungry, and that's because of the support of our legislators. So I really want to thank both of you for your advocacy.

But, you know, our Assemblywoman has been with us from the beginning, so we are humbled to be a host of this event. And again, I want to welcome all of you. So thank you. Thank you both for being here.

Thank you so much, Dr. Ornelas. Because we are hosting a formal select Committee today, I'm going to provide an overview of the rules of conduct for this Committee hearing. During this hearing, there will be no loud noises from the audience. Public comment may be provided only at the designated time and place and as permitted by the chair.

Public comment must relate to the hearing subject being discussed today. Disruptive or threatening behavior will not be tolerated. After your testimony, you may exit the room or return to your seats. There will be no engaging in conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of this hearing.

And please be aware that any violation of these rules may subject you to the removal of the hearing room. With that being said, I want to just take a moment again to thank Assembly Member Bonta, the chair of our health Committee in the Assembly, and just an incredible colleague in Sacramento for joining us today.

At this point in the legislative calendar, Members are home in their districts during the interim recess. So I would like to thank her for making the trip all the way to the San Fernando Valley here in Sylmar to join this critical conversation. Would you like to have.

Thank you so much, Assemblymember. It is my pleasure and honor always to be able to say that I am the representative in the Assembly for the beautiful people of Oakland, Alameda and Emeryville in the East Bay of California.

It is an honor to be able to be down here following the incredible leadership of Assemblymember Rodriguez, who is taking up this work around Latina power in the Assembly. Now we'll get an opportunity to talk about that within the context of what challenges we face as Latinas.

But I just want to first honor and center the fact that representation matters. It is incredibly important that Celeste Rodriguez decided to be able to host this select Committee that has been a standing Committee around Latina inequities in her hometown to bring visibility to this beautiful college that we get to be a part of at the Los Angeles Mission College.

A beautiful space right now, and to be able to just know that we are doing so within the context of the power of voice and Latina voice in particular.

Assemblymember Rodriguez has been leading us in the Assembly this last year as we've addressed issues around health care, economic vitality and growth and protection and security, and recognition of particularly our immigrant community and our undocumented community.

So it is certainly my honor to be able to sit on this Select Committee and to join in this conversation in this hearing.

And I know that the conversations that we will have with some of the amazing people who will come forward for the Select Committee will do so from a place of strength because that is the only place and the only way that Latinas roll.

So it's wonderful to be able to be here and I'm very much looking forward to the conversation.

Thank you, Assemblymember. With that being said, I do wanna recognize, hosting it here at home during this time is really significant. As we all know, it's really dangerous in our communities and communities like ours because of the Federal Administration's mass deportation agenda.

We actually learned from Cherla, who's here today, when they did an analysis of the LA raids when they, you know, in the summer when they started. The majority of them actually occurred in Panorama City, which is here in Assembly District 43. And it never ended for us.

We consistently will get alerts on our phone, either, you know, messages from colleagues or even the City of San Fernando sends out alerts about ICE being at our local Home Depots. And sometimes it happens multiple times a week. So it's not something at all that has passed. We are living in it.

And this community is feeling that deeply. Our community is filled with hardworking, beautiful families and they're being targeted based on the color of their skin, the language they speak and the jobs that they do. And this fear is impacting our economy. Our communities and systems that support our communities are being dismantled.

Today we're going to talk about the consequences of all of those actions on the backbone of our communities. Latinas I am the youngest Latina in the State Assembly. For now. I'm also the youngest mother. I'm the daughter of an immigrant who has experienced the trauma of family separation.

And while I didn't expect to focus on immigration when I entered the State Legislature a year ago, I'm responsible for representing my community and communities like mine. And the actions taken by the Federal Government impact all of us. As we'll discuss today, Latinas are essential to our state and country's future.

They're among the youngest and fastest growing segments of our population, making up nearly 1 in 10 Americans and 1 in 5 women. Today, we're entering the workforce, we're building businesses, we're raising families, and we're stepping into leadership roles while also carrying a disproportionate burden of poverty, debt and caregiving responsibilities.

With everything going on today, it's imperative that we explore ways to address the barriers to full community participation for the sake of our well being and that of our next generation. So at this time, I would like to welcome our first panelist, Maria Morales and Dr. Elsa Macias.

All right, there we go. That should work. Good morning, Chair. Good morning. And good morning everyone else who's here in the room and is tuning in. My name is Maria Morales and I serve as the statewide Policy Director at Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, also known as hope.

HOPE is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing political and economic parity for Latinas through leadership, advocacy and education to benefit all communities and the status of women. As was mentioned earlier, the story of Latinas is one of resilience and strength.

California is home to more than 7.9 million Latinas, representing nearly half of all the women in the state. Their economic well-being is directly tied to California's long-term economic strength. Latinas make up a significant share of the state's workforce, with over 3.3 million Latinas participating.

And the Latina GDP as we will see shortly, is at 1.3 trillion, which is larger than the entire GDP of some states, including Florida. These figures make one thing clear. How Latinas fare is a reflection of how California fares.

And yet, despite this momentum and contribution, long standing inequities and now the effects of recent federal policy decisions are limiting Latinas access to education, healthcare and pathways into well paying careers and economic stability.

These barriers hold back not only individual women and families, but the economic potential of the entire state and entire communities across California, which is why today's conversation is so important.

We're grateful to this Committee for creating the space to examine how these policy decisions are impacting Latina economic mobility and access to essential systems, and also to have a dedicated space within the Legislature to talk about our community. We especially want to thank Chair Assembly Member Celeste Rodriguez, a HOPE alumna, for championing this work.

And we also thank Assemblymember Bonta for being such a strong partner in all of hope's work and all of the partners who are here today for your commitment to elevating the experiences and needs of Latinas in our state.

As part of our nonpartisan mission, HOPE has spent more than a decade researching the economic status of Latinas, first here in California, then in New York, and for the first time this year at a national level.

This year's National Economic Status of Latinas report provides a comprehensive look at how Latinas are contributing, where barriers persist and what is at stake if inequities deepen. To walk us through these findings, as well as data from our 2024 report, it is my pleasure to introduce our lead researcher, Dr. Elsa Macias.

Dr. Macias has authored every report in this series and has partnered closely with HOPE to ensure the data reflect both national trends and the lived realities of Latinas across the country. So, Dr. Macias, thank you for your leadership.

Floor is yours. Thank you, Maria, and good morning. And thank you for this opportunity to address the Members of the Committee and interested stakeholders who are here with us this morning. My name is Elsa Macias and I am a research consultant with hope. I'm also a HOPE alumna. So good morning to my HOPE sisters in the audience.

So the National Economic Status of Latinas report connects data with community voices. The Economic Status of Latinas report connects data with community voices to tell the story of Latina contributions, the challenges that they face and what their potential is to continue to advance the state's economy and also nationwide.

The goal is to foster dialogue and hopefully also to drive change.

Let's retract it here.

Well, while she figures. There we go. Okay. So we collected data at the national and state levels and that included comparison to other demographic groups of women, so Asian women, black women, and white women. As well as looking at Latinas. We included snapshots from five states with the largest shares of Latinas.

So California, New York, Florida, Illinois and. Texas. Yes, thank you. And then we also conducted a series of focus groups with Latinas from various regions and backgrounds, ages from early 20s to early 60s. And that provided the greater detail on the issues that they're facing and how they could be better supported.

We found overall that Latinos are facing great financial success even as they are undergoing demographic change and facing economic uncertainty. But progress, not surprisingly, is very uneven and many Latinos are struggling financially and continue to face many barriers. And I'll just share a few very high level findings.

So as Maria mentioned, California has the largest share of Latinas across all states. There are over 20. I think it's 20.2% of the total population at just and just under 8 million Latinas in 2024. They're also relatively young compared to other demographic groups in the state. California has the largest share of Gen Z Latinas.

They're well over parity at nearly 30% share. And that they have also the highest median business revenues. Let's see. Yeah, but Latinas, as you've heard in California, also face the largest wage gap across all states across the country. California comes in dead last in terms of how large the wage gap is compared to white men.

On the left side of this graph, we'll see that the average white non Hispanic woman in California working full time year round earned 80 cents for every dollar earned by a white man.

And that was in 2023, while Latinas earned only 45 cents on the dollar in the U.S. that figure for Latinas is 58 cents, including women with any earnings on the right side of this graph.

That means that any women with working part time, full time or seasonally, and that's more likely where women fall into that category, the wage gap is much worse. Latinas earned only 41 cents on the dollar here in California, while white women drop even more to 70 cents.

So controlling for economic segregation, other factors like age, level of education, we still find that there's a wage gap.

All of these factors lead us to conclude that there is something else besides you know, what we can normally expect to explain the wage gap, and that could be either racism or sexism is the only thing that's left when you control for everything else.

And the United States Department of Commerce did in fact confirm that a few years back. So over a 40 year career, the wage gap equals to a loss of nearly $2.2 million for the typical woman in California. That's all women.

Women will have to work until the age of 110 to earn what a white man earns by the age of 60, and they'll also live on less in retirement. Social Security is a major source of income for people over the age of 65 and provides an important economic base for older Latinas as well.

Women are more likely to rely on Social Security for most or all of their income than men. But if you look at the median Social Security benefit of Latinas, which is about 14,000. Which is $14,000, I think it's $13,997. It's only 54% of the Social Security benefit for white men.

That means that a Latina who relies solely on Social Security benefits in 2024 falls well below the federal poverty line. The uninsured rate for Hispanics is consistently higher than the rate for the total population and considerably higher than for the for the non Hispanic white population. The Latina uninsured rate was 8.8% in 2022.

And the undocumented are the most likely to be uninsured. 20%. And that's half a million of all undocumented people, not just Latinos, but all of the undocumented people who do not have health insurance in our state. In California, it's a lot of people.

Aside from the potential for negative health outcomes for those without insurance, medical debt is the primary reason for bankruptcy. Except during the depths of the pandemic the Latina labor force participation rate is higher than that of white women and it's projected to remain that way going forward.

The youth of Latinas combined with a higher fertility rate and high labor force participation rate that indicates that the future workforce will increasingly depend on Latinas for a strong economy. Latinas experienced higher unemployment rates through the pandemic and the pattern continues through the past year. Latina unemployment jumped 2 percentage points between 2023 and 2024.

This chart here is for the nationwide is for the national unemployment rate. But in California the pattern is almost exactly the same. It Is jumped from 4.9% for Latinas in 2023 to 6.2% in 2024. And that's quite a 2% is quite a jump. The gap between the unemployment rates for Latinas and white women also increased slightly.

So student loan debt is a concern for Latinas of all ages. It doesn't matter whether you are an older woman who went to school later in life or who decided to sign for their child.

It's, you know, it affects how they, how they determine their major life stages, whether it's starting a business, buying a house, having a child or another, or another child. The state's total student loan debt stands at 151 billion. That's 1.62 trillion nationwide. The average debt load is higher in California than nationwide.

And borrowers who do not graduate end up financially worse off than student borrowers who complete their degree. And additionally, students who receive at least an associate degree report a higher value for their higher education degree. These two points underscore the importance of increasing completion rates for Latinas who lag behind Asian and white women.

The Latinas in our focus groups were more likely to be first generation native born women with strong work ethics and a determination to succeed. There were many discussions about how unaffordable housing, child care, education, healthcare have become and how these costs negatively affect their life choices.

Several women that we spoke with, and particularly the Gen Z Latinas, report struggling with a high cost of living and student and credit card debt. And almost, I think that every single Gen Z Latina that we spoke with has at least one side gig and some of them have even had two side gigs.

And these weren't because they chose to have them, but rather they had to have them. But many women are still doing quite well and they are managing to build generational wealth.

But even for those women who are doing well, they are lacking in the financial literacy that they feel that they need to really be able to plan for their retirement and to make the most of the retirement income at all ages, something that was different for this report than in previous reports.

At all ages, all of the women were remarkably well informed about the importance of planning for retirement and creating diversified income streams that they all want to have trusted financial advice, someone that they can, that they can trust to do even better.

So they were all also, without a doubt, concerned about an uncertain economy and the possibility of another recession. In our previous reports, Latinas are always consistently very, very optimistic. We are an optimistic group of people. We really, no matter. Even during the recession, we were still optimistic.

The difference in this report is Latinas were markedly less optimistic at most. I can say that they were cautiously optimistic. Some of the women were not so optimistic about what the next year was going to look like. And that was different. But one of the things that happened, the other thing that people talked about that was unusual.

Compared to our other reports, that it's not just a sandwich generation of women in their 40s who are taking care of their parents and their children. It's now everyone Gen Z Latinos are telling us that their plans for retirement include taking care of their parents.

They're in their early 20s and they're already thinking about, how am I going to make sure that my parents have enough money to retire? Because they have. They didn't have a chance to save anything.

But regardless of all of these challenges, they also shared stories of resilience and perseverance, as well as the importance of family and community in achieving their goals. I invite you to read the report for more information and please reach out to us with any of your comments and questions. And thank you for your attention.

Thank you so much for that presentation. Would you like to start us off with some questions?

Thank you so much, Dr. Macias, and to Hope for putting together this incredible report. I am a daughter of a single mother. My mother was a part of the Young Lord's party as a Puerto Rican in New York City. I used to go to college with her.

And I would get dropped off at the start of the day and then passed on from friend to friend to friend. And she'd have to track me down at the end of her days in college as she was trying to get her associate's degree. And that was my childcare. So it really was quite telling for me.

For you to talk about the student loan debt that many of our Latina women are experiencing, it would be helpful if you could just kind of do a double click down on just that aspect in terms of one, the value of being able to pursue a degree, either certification or extended kind of workforce, certification or advanced degree.

And whether or not that feels like a good investment for, for Latinas in this moment right now. And then also, if you can just speak to the relative cost of child care within that context.

I'll start. But Maria has been working on this issue in particular. You know, we heard continuously the idea of affordability was uppermost.

And all of the women that we spoke from, for all of the women that we spoke to, it didn't matter whether they were more financially stable or they didn't have a single, you know, they were worried about paying rent. They were all worried about affordability, they were all worried about the cost of childcare.

I remember speaking to one woman who said that she and her husband had to consider whether it made more sense for her to continue working since their entire, her entire paycheck went towards childcare. So those are the kinds of decisions that they're making.

Some of the people are saying, as the Assembly Member was just mentioning, if there is no childcare, then how can women get to their classes? If there's no childcare, then how can women get to a job when their child is sick? So these are issues that are uppermost.

We've also seen that tuition costs have spiraled and access to financial aid, which I believe somebody will be talking about later, have also been. There have been some barriers that are coming up and it becomes an issue of women deciding whether it makes sense. What's the value of this degree?

Now, for many of the women that we talked to, there was no question that we heard comments like, it's because I have an MBA that I'm able to be in the room with, you know, making major decisions. She couldn't be there in that room without that MBA. And we hear this a lot.

However, those same women were also telling us that when they're speaking to their sisters or to their family members that they're also saying, listen, you have to think about the relative merit of having ended up with 200,000 in student loan debt versus if you're going to be in a job that's going to pay you $60,000 a year, how are you going to, you know, how are you going to pay your bills and think about retirement and, you know, when you've got this elephant over your concern about the $200,000 debt.

So they were being actually very smart. I have to say that the Gen Z women that we spoke with were incredibly impressive. When I was 22, I just felt like I didn't know anything.

But these women are really smart and they're really understanding what the issues are and how it's going to affect not just them now, but in the future. These women were thinking about how am I going to manage these things? How do I take a potential degree in social work?

And this is something that I just had a conversation with a young woman, she wants to be a social worker. And she was having to decide between programs at a private university versus a public university. And she did the calculus, you know, about how was she going, what was she going to get from one versus the other.

And it's not just a matter of the tuition. It's the, it's the kind of training that she could get at one university or over the other, the kind of access that she could get at one or the other and made some really smart decisions.

And that's what they were saying that they recommend that women make smart decisions, informed decisions about what their choices are. But that's easier said than done, right? Especially when you have, like if you were saying that you have one or two children or more and you don't have a lot of resources.

I'm going to pass it here to Maria because I know that she has more to say about this.

Yeah, I was pulling up my phone because the question that you asked Assemblymember about the certificate programs in CTE, that's something that Hope has been looking into as well. One of our larger pillars as it relates to our mission of building economic purity is looking at access to education.

And what we've been concerned about is this larger concern on or this larger feedback on the return on investment of going to a four year college at a time when our families are facing already economic strain.

And so balancing having student choice and flexibility, but also looking at the data and knowing that the data shows that the higher economic return comes with a four year or professional degree. Across the board, we have seen that there is a return on investment in career technical programs, but that varies by industry.

Some of the larger returns are actually in health care.

I know you've done work around health care workforce and pathways and that's something that we are exploring especially when we look at nursing programs and when we look at policy levers like dual enrollment that allow students to start taking college courses when they are in high school and allow them to graduate with those credits or graduate with a certificate that already gives them a leg up once they're actually entering the job market.

And so that's something that we've been looking at as far as access, but even then, and I know we have some incredible speakers who are going to be talking about higher education.

Issues at the federal level with, you know, deciding what is considered a professional degree and whether nursing is considered a professional degree, also impact that larger return and impact the kind of data that we're looking at as far as student loan debt, as far as this larger return on investment in education that we're trying to combat.

And I think, you know, our Gen Z focus group participants are resilient and are optimistic and Latinas have always been hustlers, but that's certainly something that we're tracking.

And also I just wanted to kind of explore that piece of not only the workforce participation, but the kind of the entrepreneurial participation. Every Latina.

Role model that I've been able to aspire to be like has been somebody who has been an entrepreneur, who has started their own small business, who has been an intrapreneur inside larger organizations to be able to fight through that glass ceiling that is even, we'll say, murkier instead of whiter, but it is truth.

As you get to kind of more Executive office positions, can you give us a sense of what the prospect, particularly for our young Latinas look like as they seek to not only participate in the workforce, but join that part of the economy that is around entrepreneurship?

Yeah, and I will. Maybe I can start and then I'll share with you because I know we have a lot of data that we've collected historically on Latino entrepreneurship. And what we've seen is, especially post Covid, there was this boom in entrepreneurship and I think everyone in the room could probably identify at least one person.

I can think of, my nail tech, my eyebrow girl, you know, everyone. Because there's flexibility that comes with that. And even going back to the childcare question that you posed, right. We see entrepreneurship and small businesses as a really great lever to build that economic mobility.

But at the same time, from a policy perspective, we've also seen Latinas struggle to access capital, struggle to access technical assistance programs and understand what kind of grants are available to them.

I think also at the national level, with this pushback towards targeted programs like Whitman Business centers and minority owned business centers, that has also impacted that support pathway and support lever that we're looking at. And that's certainly something that we're trying to track.

I think the other thing that we're looking at is, you know, how we can invest in community development financial institutions or CDFIs as a means to provide capital to entrepreneurs with limited access to traditional financing. Especially when we're looking at our undocumented entrepreneurs who are historically excluded from these kinds of systems.

But I'll open it up to Dr. Macias.

I'm just going to add to that. You do a better job of summarizing my research than I do. Thank you. The Gen Z Latinas that we spoke to, we had one woman in particular, but this is, she was an example of a lot of the women that we spoke to. She was underemployed. She had a bachelor's degree.

Underemployed, was struggling to find a job. This is in March when we did these focus groups. And through the summer we were hearing more of the news cycle about how it's a big problem, people are unemployed in March. She's already saying, I can't find a job that is a professional job. I'm underemployed.

And she had a second job, a second gig, and then her third gig, she would dress up in a bunny suit and go to birthday parties. And she had a positive attitude.

It didn't matter what it took, she was going to get it because she was going to say, I am going to have a better life than my parents could provide. I mean, they were about, they were about surviving and I want to build wealth. So that's the kind of spirit that we're dealing with.

Yeah. And I think the last thing I'll add there is we want to support Latina entrepreneurs. We want to create pathways for Latinas to find careers that are meaningful and well paying and we'll set them up for success.

But as shared in the focus groups, one of the issues that we're also combating is retirement and how we're setting up our Latinas for that longer term vision.

And so if you are creating your own small business, how do you access public retirement programs like CalSavers, for example, which we have a few bullet points on in our 2024 economic status of Latinas report, which you can scan the QR code to access.

And also, you know, even looking at how we make sure that they still have access to affordable health insurance, which I know a different panel will cover, but those are two other considerations that we're looking at even as we think about entrepreneurship.

Thank you so much. I wanted to lift up a lot of what you're talking about.

You know, we learn hard work from our parents, but there's a lot of things that we don't have that a lot of families that have been here a long time or have social capital or this, like, inherited stability is how the report frames it.

And it really stands out because of even your data that compares these entrepreneurs, Latina entrepreneurs versus white women entrepreneurs, and just how that access from the beginning, whether it's capital or social, really sets them up in a different way for the end result.

And so I guess I want to ask, starting at that place and then also having, like, our cultural norms, that we have responsibilities beyond ourselves, the sandwich generation situation. But, you know, it goes beyond that, right?

Like, we're there, we're supposed to support our whole families, our kids and our parents, while we're also supposed to get our education and buy a house, because that's what we're told is the way forward in an economy where that gives us a lot of debt and not necessarily have the opportunity to get out of that debt to successfully, you know, retire one day.

It's like this situation that I feel like I'm so proud, right, of our culture. Well, simultaneously, there's, like, these realities that we're faced with. So it's kind of a question of, like, what's gotta give? And I think there's what can we do locally to support our own community?

But, like, at the state level, the suggestions of how we ensure at least we're avoiding the pitfalls. And I mentioned the Bill about, you know, addressing wage gap issues in any way we can.

But also what you mentioned about college completion, how do we ensure that Latinas who are aspiring to do more and enroll complete their degrees so they're not just saddled with debt without that opportunity to earn a higher wage?

Yeah, yeah, I absolutely hear you. And I think Dr. Macias and I were nodding because that's the theme that we've been trying to, you know, unpack, I think, since Hope started. I think one of the interesting things that we've noticed about Latinas is thinking, you know, we've mentioned them as economic engines for the country and the state.

When you look at GDP, when you look at, you know, the rate at which they're building wealth. But they're also economic engines for their families, and they're also the safety net for their families. And they're also, you know, trying to think about the long term.

And so I think one of the things that we've been trying to do is how do we partner? How do we think about policy and practice? Right. And so we're tackling the issue at the same time. One of the things that we've tried to do.

I know with Pro Tem, HOPE was a co sponsor of SB642, is addressing the systemic issues that are impacting that are trying to, you know, clear the path so that the cultural challenges and the, you know, larger social capital challenges that they're facing aren't then, you know, saddled with structural issues that could be addressed through policy. Right.

And that was one of the things that we did with SB642 is it created visibility on the reporting requirements, but it also changed the definition of wages.

So for the Latinas who are already in industries like tech, who maybe are getting paid the same salary as their counterparts, but aren't getting the same benefits, like getting more stocks in the company, for example, or getting different vacation benefits, that the definition of salary and wage in the law reflects modern compensation practices.

So addressing the structural from the policy, from the practice side, it's. HOPE has a series of leadership programs, as you know. And part of what we do is also partner with our Latina entrepreneurs who are in and out of our network who are addressing financial literacy and creating community events to be able to do that, building mentorship.

We do that through our HOPE College leadership program, which is national. We had over 120 graduates this year. And we were building those soft skills of how do you negotiate, how do you understand this?

And also just creating spaces like what we're having today at the select Committee to talk about these issues so that, you know, Latinas don't feel like they're alone. And I can speak to that from experience.

Even in trying to navigate the workspace as a first gen professional, when I was speaking to one of my friends and realizing that she was going through the same issues that I was, it was like, oh my God. Okay, so it's not a unique experience. It's not me. I'm not the issue.

It's a bigger issue that we can all work together to address.

Just to add to that, we are also seeing that Latinas are, it's a very, it can be very isolating for a lot of Latinas who are, you know, if you have a full time job and you've got, you're trying to start up a business and you're working on it after your job, after dinner, after doing the dishes, because we, you know, Latinas do carry the larger share of household duties as well.

And so if you don't start working. On your business until 11pm and you don't have access to the capital, so it's very isolating. It can be very difficult. And so one of the things that we want to do is to be able to bring these women together.

I've spoke with many, many women across the state about what are the issues that they face.

And, you know, they need more information about the technical side of how to run a business, but they also need a friendly face, someone to talk to about, as Maria was just saying about, you know, this is what you have to face. The other thing that they were also very adamant about is that.

They need support from their own Latino community. In many ways, just like we are the social safety net for our families, in many ways, some of the intrapreneurs are saying that the Latino community also is. They become the safety net for the Latino community. So they need the support from the Latino community.

They need people to come and shop with them. And that makes a big difference to them in terms of how supported they feel. You said something about. I'm sorry, I'm blanking out. You were making a point about besides the businesses. College completion. Yeah, the college.

So, you know, for some of these women, some of these women have MBAs. The younger women now are starting businesses and they have MBAs, and they're really smart, whip smart, and really understand what they're doing. But a lot of Latina entrepreneurs don't have an MBA. A lot of them don't have a bachelor's degree.

It's like, you know, this is a matter of opportunity. And so for them, it's not just needing the access to technical expertise, to technical education, but understanding, you know, what they don't, they don't even know sometimes what they don't know. And so it becomes a very meandering process to build up a successful business.

Well, thank you both so much. I know we have really amazing panels coming up and we have so many more questions for you. I want to encourage everyone to please look at this report that HOPE did. It is a really amazing thing to read. Things are going to jump out at you.

You're going to relate to half of the things that it lists, if not more. And it's really just a starting point today of having more conversations like this, how we fill these gaps that exists, both that, you know, come with our culture, but also the systems that we're here to help work to improve.

So please give a round of applause to our panelists for joining us today.

For our next panel, we will be talking about immigration enforcement impacts and Latina safety and the workforce. I'm going to ask our panelists to Please come up.

Dr. Amada Armenta, Faculty Director for the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute Jen Baca Beltran, Government Relations Director for SEIU Local 99 Megan Ortiz, Executive Director of IDEMSA Shannon Camacho, senior policy associate for Inclusive Action for the City and Jeanette Zanipatin, Director of Policy and Advocacy for CHIRLA.

While you all join us up here today, we're going to be starting with Luis Nolasco, senior policy advocate with with ACLU Southern California, who is joining us remotely today.

Thank you so much, Committee. I'm sorry I couldn't be there. It's near the holidays and trying to squeeze in everything before the end of December. But thank you so much for having us. My name is Luis Nolasco, senior policy advocate and organizer.

And I think the topic of the conversation is the impact that immigration enforcement has had on Latinas. Before even getting to that, I think it's important to acknowledge that the work of Latinas is often the unspoken labor that happens behind the scenes.

Even for myself, the reason why I'm here is because of the powerful Latinas that have let me come into my leadership and in my own authenticity. So shout out to all the Latinas that are always upholding all the men in this work.

As we're moving forward, but really quickly regarding the impacts of the federal Administration, I think the biggest and most consistent conversation has been around the unconstitutional arrests that are happening all across California and the nation, in particular here in Southern California, where we saw back in June, we were heavily impacted by the Ayes raids.

And while the ACLU is seeking relief through our litigation, that's because Per De Movino, we know that the Supreme Court essentially a couple months ago gave Ayes and DHS the green light on using, per their own words, right?

Quote, unquote, apparent ethnicity combined with other factors like being a day laborer speaking Spanish as reasons to stop individuals on the street and question them further.

And so as a result of the increased arrest of Ayes operations in the field, what organizations like the ACLU and rapid response networks across Southern California and the state have really seen is this impact on families losing wages from missing work, mental health impact on families and the children, parents being afraid to take children to school, modifying hours when they go out.

So really just figuring out a whole alternate schedule, mothers afraid to know, do their daily tasks right? Going to the laundromat grocery store all out of fear of being targeted. So I think that is a very consistent feedback we get from a lot of people. And just for some numbers.

And, you know, this is all data that you, the Committee and everybody else can have easily accessible. It lives on a project called the Deportation Data Project, which is a collaboration of multiple analysts and advocates from across the country, constantly filing freedom of information requests to the Federal Government to get some of this information.

But in just running some numbers that I think would be of interest to everybody, from January 1st to October 31st here in the state, close to 2100 women Latinas were arrested in DHS or Immigration Enforcement operations all across the state. And a good majority of those were, quote, unquote, community arrests. Right.

The data doesn't necessarily say what was a community arrest versus not, but they. Have. Data points that kind of allude to those being potentially as community arrests. So I think it's super important to see that a good majority of the arrests that are happening are in the field.

And so as we're doing this work, right, just continuing to plug in our rapid response networks and doing the work that we can to ensure that our immigrant community can continue to thrive here in California.

And sort of related to the impacts of work, I think individuals not going to work is a huge thing and we'll see how that impacts our economy. But I think an additional federal impact that we're going to see and have started to see is the impact of the doing away of TPS.

The Temporary Protected Status in California is number four in the country in terms of TPS holders. We have about 80,000 individuals that reside in the state that are TPS holders. And to let the Committee know some of the future threats, in February 3rd of 2026, we will see the end of Haitian TPS.

Super important that we also uplift, right, the Haitian community because they are Latinos, they are Caribbean, and often black immigrants often aren't talked about in the same sense as other immigrants. That threatens about 330,000 individuals nationwide.

And what we're going to continue to see in the shortcomings right now is Venezuelan TPS, which the Supreme Court greenlit the end to that in October of this year, which is close to 72,000 people nationwide. Sorry, 300 and that is 300 and some. 600,000. Yes, 600,000 nationwide due to STPs, which also ended in September of this year.

So this is a huge number of people that had legal status and the legal ability to work that are now going to have to shift into the alternative economy. So as folks were talking, often our community, because they don't have the legal pathways to be able to work, they have to resort to things like street vending.

And what we're seeing across the state also is the crackdown on street vendors. We were able to get some recent legislation signed to strengthen these protections. Right. But what we continue to see is this crackdown on immigrant communities and immigrant vendors like street vending and alternative economies that basically our community has to do to survive.

And so that's another additional thing that we think about how we continue to strengthen and protect these alternative ways of working for people that do not have a legal quote, unquote. Status to work, I guess is a better way to say it.

And then just sort of lastly, wrap it up because I know this is a lot for such a short six minute speech, but just flagging the conditions around Ayes detention, this is an ever pressing issue for us at the ACLU and just something that we're constantly worried about.

These facilities across the state are notoriously known for their inhumane conditions. We saw that Ayes and DHS move to open a new facility of 2,900 in California City. And so what we're going to see is that if there's more detention, that means there's going to be more arrests.

And with that, an ongoing concern in the past has been just access to reproductive care in these facilities. We know that Ayes consistently denies these things to people. And that is something that we're monitoring and we really want to flag for the Committee.

What will that look like and what will that access look like for people being arrested and detained in these facilities in California? Given that me, you know, nationally, what we're seeing is that Ayes is ignoring its previous and long standing policy of not arresting pregnant and postpartum people.

And so if this is happening in places like Louisiana and Georgia, you know, it's safe to say that likely some of these things will happen here in California. And you know, I think that's an opportunity for us as Californians to really stand up and ensure that those things are not happening.

So I'll end it there because I know that was a super broad scope of things, but I think there's a lot that we can do as California. You know, we set the tone nationally for a reason, just because we are the state that welcomes immigrants. And so I think I'll leave it on that note. Thank you.

Thank you. Luis and I, we're going to do Q and A at the end, but I did want to just ask you before you Go. Touching upon that last thing that you mentioned and the maternal health access for women who are being detained. We're hearing horror stories, as you mentioned, out of places like Louisiana.

And while we haven't heard those stories yet from here, I'd like to know, in your opinion, as you all have to battle this out in court, and obviously there's federal jurisdiction and local, and they're not following their own guidance, what our role is tangibly to step into that space to protect our community.

Because in our own neighborhood down the street. I remember hearing, you know, there's a young staffer who I know watches her house. When she's at her desk working, she looks at the ring camera because her parents are home and they've been home since July and they're not leaving.

A lot of our community Members are just staying in place. And our community has stepped up beautifully to do mutual aid efforts to support families that they know are not going to leave because they're too scared of being separated.

Some of them only leave to write a piece of paper about where their children go, which we've stepped in. I was really happy to run a Bill specifically about, with Chirla and other partners to make sure there's a pathway for temporary guardianship for children so we can put in these pieces.

And then, of course, we have to let families know how to access these tools. But when it comes to something like detainment policies that are not being followed, what. What is it that we can do? Knowing that Latinas are being impacted in this way and, and having miscarriages while being shackled?

Yeah. I think this is the ever, like, ever evolving question that we always have to deal with. Right. Is like this issue of state versus federal first. I think California has already passed some laws, right. That kind of strengthen the state's ability to have some sort of oversight.

There is SB 1132, which authorizes public health officials to conduct inspections. There are certain standards around, like. The auditors and auditor controllers, right. To make sure that insurance standards are up to kind of quality standards per. Like jail and prison conditions. So there's existing things like that.

The AG under AB103 as authority to inspect these facilities and do reports. So there is existing things like that that I think is important that we continue to implement and uphold. And then there's the additional thing, right.

Which is to make sure that as a state we're providing resources to the organizations and the legal service providers that are doing representation. Because one of the. I think the largest thing is just getting folks out of detention. And it is so incredibly difficult to get people out of Ayes detention if they don't have a lawyer.

And I think that is just an ever pressing need. And I think I'm sure the whole panel here would agree with me that everybody is just inundated with the amount of requests that they're getting for legal assistance, and the existing infrastructure cannot keep up with the demand that exists.

I think that's really the role of the state of California, hopefully to be able to supplement that and continue to increase capacity, but also funding for existing organizations to be able to take on cases, because it's definitely not cheap. We don't do direct legal services. Right.

But we work with a lot of our partners that do, and they often tell us, you know, how overworked they are, and they're just not getting enough resources to be able to, like I said, meet the demands that exist. And as I said, the tension is only going to grow. Right? We have a new facility.

All of the facilities are hitting maximums, trying total, total, total number of people detained. And Ayes is still, you know, seeking to potentially expand other facilities in Northern California. And so hopefully that doesn't happen. But we know that this Administration is willing to do these things.

And so I think that's really our role, right, to be able to. Legal representation, I think, is one of the most important things right now, and not just for detention, but also for the ICE arrests that we're seeing. I think a lot of those folks are going to need that, including people that are losing TPS. Right.

Because what we're seeing, a lot of the arrests are happening to Venezuelans. So it's either people that entered with some sort of parole rights seeking asylum, or people that have received TPS that are losing that status that are now being arrested by immigration enforcement agencies.

Well, thank you. We definitely focus a lot on ensuring we're investing in representation when it comes to any way that we can legally protect our community members. And I think it's a great reminder, when this all started in La, there was the caution to everyone, like, it's not ending here. And we've seen it spread.

And so I think as we learn about these things happening in other states, we do have to remain conscious, just as community members, to uplift these stories as well. So that we're prepared to step in. As we continue to fight this. We're going to continue with our panel. Thank you so much, Luis, for joining us. Up next.

You want to start us off, Dr. Amada?

Yes, thank you. And then I'll wait for my deck to appear on the screen here. Okay. Good morning. Thank you. Oh, actually, good afternoon. Thanks so much for the opportunity to be here to represent LPPI and to share some research. I'm from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.

We are a Latino focused think tank that operates at UCLA. I'm here in my capacity representing LPPI, but actually, immigration enforcement is my personal research as a faculty member. So in the minutes that follow, I'm going to share some insights from both LPPI's research.

But then what I happen to know from social science research in general about immigration enforcement's impacts on our state and our workforce. So I don't think I have to belabor the way the Federal Government has totally remade our immigration system. I think Luis covered it really well.

The consequences of these federal actions are spilling over into every area that our state is responsible for, from public safety to schools, to health, to economic mobility and the economy. I want to point out that this comes at a tremendous cost to California taxpayers. We are a donor state.

We pay more in federal taxes than we get back from the Federal Government. So a recent analysis found that we paid $80 billion more in federal taxes than we received back.

And what we get for those contributions is a government that is destabilizing our economy and our workforce, that's terrorizing our neighborhoods, and it's making it really hard for businesses and industries to thrive. It also affects state revenues. And all of these things are really important because we know you work really hard every year to write our budget.

In general, Californians don't support this. A recent poll found that over 70% of California voters believe that undocumented immigrants have a positive impact on California's economy. And they're not wrong. In California, we always brag about the fact that we're the fourth largest economy in the world, and, and immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, contribute to that economic strength.

Undocumented Californians fortify our fiscal health. They contribute over $20 billion a year in different kinds of taxes. They are consumers. They spend money. Undocumented Californians make up about 8% of our workforce, and they contribute 5% to the state. Now, my students, for example, might think that 5% seems like a really small number.

But to give you a sense of the scale of that, if we think back to some of the most severe economic downturns in California in the last 20 years, from the pandemic to the Great Recession, those were economic downturns at an amount of three and a half percent. So 5% of our GDP is, is huge.

Now, a recent LPPI publication highlighted the importance of Latino and Latina immigrant workers to California's economy and across particular economic sectors. And we know that this isn't just about undocumented workers. But right now, all foreign born people and really even citizens are feeling the chill of this Administration.

As this slide shows, undocumented workers are central to the sectors that keep California's economy functioning. Agriculture, for example, is one of our core economic engines. Our state actually produces more agriculture than any other state. 40% of that workforce is undocumented. About 30% of Latinos who work in agriculture are women. Construction is another critical pillar.

We know that over 20% of construction workers are undocumented. And we are in a housing shortage in California. We need to build more housing. And LPPI is leading research on housing recovery in places like Altadena. Our undocumented workforce is really central to the efforts to build in the places that we need it.

This pattern really continues across all major sectors. Half of all childcare workers in California, for example, are Latina. Many are undocumented. Undocumented workers are just embedded in the places that we work, in our economic system and in our neighborhoods. I want to make clear that immigration policy doesn't just control who can enter the country.

It dictates who can build income and wealth over a lifetime and across generations. In a couple of months, LPPI is going to publish a report about the structural challenges to Latino and Latina wealth accumulation. And immigration is very much part of that story. We often talk about the Latina wage gap, and it's important.

But another wage gap that we don't talk about is the income penalty that comes with working with without a legal immigration status. And the income penalty that comes with undocumented status doesn't stop with the second generation. Researchers find that it can be traced into the third generation.

So their grandchildren of undocumented residents experience a wage penalty because of the way that social stratification or the social transmission of inequality works. California has over 3 million mixed status families. And these are really the families that are most likely to be experiencing poverty. Poverty that is much more likely if one of their breadwinners is deported.

For families who manage to scratch out a path to home ownership, deportations also increase the risk of deportation. Luis, in the previous panel talked about the impacts of this environment for pregnant women. Immigration policy doesn't just impact the ability of Californians to accumulate wealth. It impacts our health and well being.

You're probably familiar with findings that show that immigration enforcement decreases people's willingness to or accessible to accessible health care. Excuse me, you might be less familiar with research documenting just how bad high enforcement environments are for public health, particularly for pregnant Latinas.

In a panel on Latina inequities, I wanted to make the point that regardless of legal status, studies consistently find spikes in preterm births and lower birth weight infants born to Latina mothers after immigration raids or during major policy shifts that increase maternal stress.

This matters because birth outcomes are strong predictors of long term health, cognitive development, and later on, educational attainment and adult earnings. So today's immigration enforcement is really producing inequality for tomorrow's children. And that starts in the womb.

If there's one takeaway from today's conversation, it's that immigration enforcement is a workforce issue, it's a health issue, it's an economic issue. And the costs are not confined to immigrant households. We fill them across California and we will fill them for generations to come.

In the spring, LPPI will be producing new research underscoring the economic impacts of Ayes enforcement in LA County with our friends from Inclusive Action for the City. And in the year that follows, we will produce more work that we hope will support yours, but also everybody's efforts for a state that's built on on dignity, mobility and opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Jean Baca Beltran and I'm the Government relations Director with SDIU Local 99 representing education workers, childcare providers in Southern California who have organized under California Childcare Providers United, also known as CCPU. So we are providers organizing also at child care centers.

The 60,000 CCPU Members and thousands of Center Based Child Care and Head Start workers whom SEIU represents have been raising alarm bells through their union about the impact of children and families of the Trump administration's immigration raids, which are targeting not dangerous thugs, but instead working parents, mothers, fathers and even children.

In fact, we know that over 600 children have been detained by ICE so far this year, a record number. This shameful record includes children with cancer and other serious health conditions throughout the country.

And in California, ICE has repeatedly shown up at child care centers, schools, Community Clinics, and of course in the neighborhood where home based providers live and work. According to the center of Study of child care employment, 39% of child care providers are immigrants, both documented and undocumented. 98% are women, 44% Latinas, 45% Spanish speakers.

And as we know, the U.S. Supreme Court has authorized Ayes to engage in racial profiling.

So all people of color are potential targets providers primary concern is for families and children they serve and they are deeply concerned about these families and children's safety, mental health, long term health which are all damaged by the daily terrors of living in communities occupied by ICE and the National Guard.

As my colleague already here mentioned, this is why through our union training funds we have provided dozens of Know youw Rights trainings to our members. While we are unaware of any SEIU Member provider having experienced a raid, we know that families they serve as well as members of their union have been targeted.

You can even look to what happened in Chicago. One of our members, after training with Annoy your Rights from our Union, she shared that she had done a training with fellow providers and parents handing out red cards to help them assert their rights.

Not long after this training she provided, one of her provider members was stuck stopped by ICE and she was able to use the red card and she was promptly released.

Another parent indicated to our member she often encounters ICE at her grocery store and said that because of our members training that she had given her, she felt more confident to handle those interactions calmly and safely.

However, we know that immigrant families and children are aware of the ways that they have specifically been targeted by ICE on their way to and from school. They are aware that ICE has attempted to enter their schools in Los Angeles and that children across the nation have been abandoned by ICE or detained.

Just this past week, ICE showed up at a high school in an effort to capture parents emerging from parent teacher conferences. Our communities are under siege and ICE knows that families love for their children and their commitment to their care and education create opportunities to attack.

Childcare providers know that these experiences are profoundly traumatic for children with lasting negative impacts. And providers also know that you don't have to experience a trauma directly to be traumatized by it.

Just seeing what is happening to other immigrant families also traumatizes other children and families and limits every aspect of their lives from accessing medical care to shopping for nutritious, healthy food. Childcare providers have reported increased anxiety as a result of behavior of changes in the children that they have served.

Our International Union has provided some resources to help with this, but more support could be helpful.

When families lose income because a parent is detained or because parents are sheltering in place and they can't go to work because of the threat of the raids, the resulting impoverishment of household has a negative impact above and beyond the emotional trauma and and fear of being hunted.

Family child care providers are struggling to keep slots due to family sheltering in place, especially during the significant ICE activity reducing providers already inadequate income. But I need you to listen to this. Providers aren't just caregivers, protectors and witnesses of the traumas of our communities. They are fighters.

Childcare providers, education workers and other union members are leading a fight back against this authoritarianism, inhumanity and terror. And we will win. You all just saw what happened in California on November 4th. Working people rose up and said hell no to the hate, to MAGA and to the terrorism targeting our beloved communities.

This could not have happened without the mobilization, education and turnout of working people. This is why it's so critical for all of you all to partner and support not just working people, but working people who are organized, activated and fighting together in our unions.

At the end of the day, childcare providers can mitigate the harm of ICE activity in their neighborhoods. If we were to ensure every provider had training, something like we'd be able to do through the union with the state support. But our providers will only be safe when ICE raids end altogether.

And the only thing that can make that happen is organizing. We are proud that SEIU member childcare providers at Home Based Care and Center Based Care have the opportunity to organize against fascism and in the abusive of the anti immigrant regime. And grateful to count on so many of you as partners and allies in that work.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Chairs Rodriguez and Bonta. Also a Puerto Rican mentored by young lords. Just had to throw that in there. My name is Megan Ortiz. I'm the Executive Director of the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA). We sit on the steering Committee of the California Domestic Workers Coalition and are part of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

And for Nearly the last 30 years, Idepska has served, educated and outreached with and to the day labor and household worker population in Los Angeles.

For over a decade, we've operated five of the seven day labor centers officially endorsed by the city of Los Angeles, serving thousands of day laborers, street vendors and domestic workers across a number of industries.

We operate these centers under contract at the Los Angeles Economic and Workforce Development Department and also with state funding through the California Workers Outreach Program. Since June of this year, three of those five day labor centers that we operate have been raided a total of 16 times.

Those all have been US Border Patrol raids with hundreds of day laborers, street vendors and domestic workers detained. At two of these raids, Border Patrol detained two staff members of our worker center.

In the last one, at our Cypress Park Day Labor Center, Border Patrol tackled and permanently injured one of our staff Members of that worker center I have had the unfortunate experience of being in three of those raids myself right here in the San Fernando Valley at our Van Nuys Day labor center, where dozens of mass Border Patrol agents aimed automatic weapons and gas canisters at myself and my staff.

Targeting these highly visible and vulnerable communities is really a way to disrupt the physical, social and economic landscape of Los Angeles. And it really creates an atmosphere of terror and sends the clear message that day laborers, domestic workers, street vendors, and their families, and by extension all Latinos, are not desired and must be disappeared.

We know that day laborers, household workers, and street vendors form an integral component of the Los Angeles economy and California. Across a number of industries, including childcare, elder care, house cleaning, and landscaping. They often do some of the most dangerous work, including wildfire mitigation and care. During global pandemics.

They provide a vital function for small businesses, homeowners and families alike. Domestic work is the work that makes all of their work possible. And often this work is done with wage, hour, and safety regulations protecting them in name only, but not in practice.

And targeted raids immediately inflict damage to this labor pool and amplify impacts and fear across the entire city. The immediate impacts of these raids have caused an interruption of work, and community organizing has caused workers to be dispersed, contracts lost, family separation and housing instability.

Raids at parks where often caregivers are taking children, have caused children to be separated from their caregivers and those workers from their families.

Overall, the concentration of enforcement in areas known for day laborers, domestic workers, and street vendors really just creates a chilling effect that discourages all members of our communities from engaging in public life and the economy.

The designated worker centers in Los Angeles were created through a community, local business, government partnerships designed to promote safety, provide resources, and manage public space. Raids targeting these and surrounding areas are a direct breach of those trusts, undermining years of work by local and state government and community laborers. Community leaders.

I know other people are going to talk about this as well, but a lot of people don't understand also that our worker centers also serve as public health hubs. The incidents that have happened across our worker centers have interrupted the critical P100 fit testing training to workers who are involved in the rebuild of Los Angeles. Pulsed wildfires.

We have essential checkups and infectious disease screenings, as well as vaccine clinics and provide legal and other educational services. We specifically call on this Committee to examine the use of targeted enforcement strategies against day laborers, household workers, and street vendors. In California. There's an estimated 300,000 domestic workers with a great concentration of those workers.

Here in Southern California, we think that worker centers should be declared. Sensitive areas, the same way that schools and hospitals have been done throughout the state. We believe that worker centers and their services that provide critical.

Local support with local and state funding should be funded more with additional infrastructure to match the recognition and protection that they deserve. We believe that also we need to hold accountable big businesses that collude with immigration enforcement. We know that these businesses are receiving huge tax incentives while their parking lots are being used as hunting grounds.

And finally, existing programs, such as SB 1350, which finally supports the health and safety protections of some domestic workers in California, needs to be enforced properly with the enforcement dollars, as well as the continuation of programs such as the Domestic Worker Education and Outreach program, which connects employers and workers so that everyone knows not just best practices, but also rights and responsibilities.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Hi everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Shannon Camacho and I am with Inclusive Action for the City. I work within our policy Department and I have a slide deck to go over a little bit of the work that we do.

First, thank you so much for inviting and creating this very important discussion Assembly Members and, and definitely want to thank fellow panelists for uplifting the amazing work that you all are doing on the ground. So Inclusive Action for the City is an economic justice nonprofit. We are also a community development financial institution.

So we work with micro entrepreneurs, small business owners, and folks that work in the informal economy. So a lot of the community members that we work with, either through our advocacy or through our small lending, are informal workers like street vendors, landscapers and recyclers.

And these are often folks like, like my colleague just mentioned, you know, a lot of the times folks that work in informal industries, they, they. There aren't these mechanisms of protection that other workers have. So when they do experience work abuses or wage theft, these are obviously issues that predominantly affect folks that work within that industry.

At Inclusive Action, we also work on policy advocacy and work. One of the things that we've had to do this year especially is really transition a lot of our work onto the community needs that are coming from the rates.

So many of our clients, many of the folks that we've worked with over the years, as I mentioned, are part of the informal work economy. So many of these workers are themselves immigrants, many of them undocumented. A lot of the clients that we lend out to are undocumented as well.

And so we absolutely realized that we had to pivot a lot of our work, both on the lending side, but also in the advocacy that we do. We are as Inclusive Action. We do a lot of local advocacy at the LA County level.

We're part of the Immigrants RLA Coalition, which is a coalition that advocates for funding and for resources for immigrant community Members. But we also realized we need to do, we needed to do a lot more to address the enforcement piece specifically.

So some of the work that we've had to pivot to is joining the LA Raids Rapid Response Network.

So many, many of our organizations, and you know, CHIRLA is here and is going to speak on that work, have created these networks for many, many years that address enforcement on the ground by going out and verifying and assisting community Members with legal resources and other social services that they need after they're arrested.

As Luis mentioned, the very first need for so many community members is an attorney or someone to as they are being transported to a processing center or to detention center.

So we as Inclusive Action have joined the network and continue to work within the network to inform our community members and our clients whenever there are actions of enforcement on the ground.

Additionally, we've had to pivot and do a lot of know your rights work, right specifically around to small business owners, to street vendors as since street vendors do work outdoors, there isn't a door that they can close when a border patrol agent or DHS agent is, is going to arrest them.

And we do know as, as Maegan already said, that DHS is targeting specifically street vendors, day laborers, folks that work outside. And this is part of their racial profiling attacks against our community.

And so we've had to really emphasize and teach, you know, our clients and also partner with organizations, trusted organizations to provide these very important legal resources for folks to protect themselves as much as possible. Additionally, Inclusive Action is one of the founding members of the LA Street Vendor Campaign.

So this is a coalition of, along with our partners, Community Power Collective, the East LA Community Corporation and Public Council and our organizations work to support street vendors in Los Angeles through advocacy, through organizing.

And what we've done this year is realize because so many vendors have had to make the impossible decision to either stop working to protect themselves from being arrested or to continue working working because the financial hardship would just be too much for their families. We've created a solidarity Fund for street vendors so that that can support them.

A one time fund that can support them as they're making those very, very difficult decisions. And so we were able to give $500 cash cards to over 800 street vendors in Los Angeles county to try to support them during this time. But obviously the need is still there.

It's going to continue to be there because as folks already mentioned, the impacts of enforce beyond the initial arrest, you know, families will continue to struggle for unfortunately in some cases generations because of the income lost. Some of the other things that we have done is we continue to advocate for resources like, like cash assistance.

So the Emergency Rent Relief Program at the LA County level and the Small Business Resiliency Fund from LA County we've advocated because this is another way to get cash assistance to our community to support themselves during this, this very difficult time.

Unfortunately we have had clients that we've lended out to that have had close their businesses because they have not been able to go out and work or because foot traffic outside their, their businesses and corridors has decreased tremendously. And obviously this affects them and their family and our neighborhoods for generations.

Some of the other ways that we've had to pivot as well, our Access to Capital team has really buffered up our hire a vendor program because in addition to supporting with cash assistance, one thing we wanted to do is to make sure and encourage communities, community members in Los Angeles companies to hire vendors in spaces that are safe and, you know, where they're protected and they can sell freely without worrying about arrest.

And so that program has really grown this year in an effort to protect folks as they they vend. Additionally, we are a plaintiff, Inclusive Action is a plaintiff in a lawsuit to try to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from accessing taxpayer data from the Irs. And so this is a lawsuit that's ongoing.

And this is very important because so many of the folks that we le out to, we, we want to make, we, we pride ourselves on making sure that we're lending out to folks with or without status.

And so it's very important for us that we protect our clients and folks that are getting, getting small loans who may not have status.

Some of the, and and folks already mentioned a little bit, one of, one of the wins that we actually had this year around for our vendor community is the passage of SB635, which is the Street Vendor Business Protection Act. And Cheerleader is one of our fellow co sponsors for that bill.

And this bill would protect, is going to protect come January street vendors from being required to have background checks and fingerprinting requirements in order to get their local vending permits.

So obviously this is a very great win because we're trying to build, we've built this firewall to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from getting information from vendors because we know that they're actively targeting them.

And a couple of the last things that we also it's very important, I think, and a lot of the time we don't think about some of the other workers in the informal economy outdoors, such as recyclers and landscapers.

And we're also, through inclusive action, trying to build up and work with these community members to gather more data and research to show the impacts that enforcement and overall just the economic disparities that these industries of folks that work outdoors have, including landscapers and recyclers.

I think.

Okay, some of the recommended policies, obviously, I think the biggest one being, you know, stopping the raids. And obviously that's something that so many different levels of government and community advocates have been, have been demanding, will continue demand.

But in the meantime, something that's really important, a couple of things that we think are very important are the topic of retirement. And I can go on and on about this, but I think it's very, very important.

And I'm so glad our hope spoke about because one of the things that we've obviously seen, bless you from our, our clients, our folks that are street vendors and outdoor workers, is so many folks are over the age of 65 and having to work to survive and to support themselves and their families.

Obviously these are, these are folks that should be retired, should be enjoying their lives, but it's just not possible because of the lack of social safety net resources for them.

And so one of the things that we will continue to advocate for is the creation of more guaranteed basic income programs at the state level, at the local levels, to support specifically folks that don't have status and who are immigrant workers.

And so that's something that we're going to continue to advocate for, especially something long term that can support folks when emergencies like this happen where there is an increase in enforcement and targeting against them.

Additionally, we continue to advocate for more cash assistance, rental relief programs and services because we know that affordability has always been an issue in Los Angeles. And just the fact that an emergency like these rates have, has incredibly exacerbated the economic hardship of folks that were already experiencing such dire economic disparities.

So creating long term rent relief programs for folks regardless of status is something that's very important to us. And then lastly, as someone already mentioned, increasing funding to community development financial institutions like ours, we believe it's extremely important to continue to support entrepreneurs, especially Latina entrepreneurs.

We want to be able to continue to do that and we want also to support economic justice organizations that are doing this amazing work and are on the ground. And so those are some of the recommendations that we have.

But definitely, I think want to just echo the very, very important conversation of the fact that we know that these targeted arrests on our community are affecting Latinas that are undocumented. And this is a racial profiling specifically against our community that we need to continue to be very vocal about. So thank you.

Thank you. So I want to echo my co panelists. Thanks for inviting us as well to be part of the panel, but also for all the amazing work that everyone is doing doing around the response to the LA raids. My name is Jeanette Zanipatin. I 'm the Director of Policy and Advocacy at CHIRLA.

I oversee all of CHIRLA's local, state and federal policy work as well as our impact litigation team. And currently CHIRLA is also responsible for the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network.

And so we've been able to sort of have a bird's eye view in terms of what's happening with the raids, as well as ensuring that we are able to work, like I said, with some of our trusted partners, many of whom are on this panel in this room, in order to really have a comprehensive response to the raids and the way that the raids are impacting our communities in so many different ways.

For many of you who may not be familiar, CHIRLA is almost celebrating its 40th anniversary. We'll be celebrating our anniversary next year. And obviously we have never seen anything at the level that we've seen at this moment in time, especially with regards to immigration enforcement or, or even what's happening within the immigration processes themselves.

I am also an immigration lawyer and I've practiced for almost 30 years and we've never seen anything like the moment that we're living in. And so once this new Administration took hold, we immediately reactivated our Rapid Response Network. Back in November, we started with over 200 volunteers. We now have over 1700 volunteers in LA County alone.

And we need more. So anyone who's interested, please let us know because we have trainings every week. But in addition to that, you know, CHIRLA's main work is really to help organize our community, protect our community as well, through education and advocate and engage. We're also a membership driven organization.

We have over 53,000 members in California and nationally. And to that end we also are able to have that direct connection with community members and have a pulse of sort of what they're experiencing and what their immediate needs are.

And given that, you know, the start of this Administration sort of started off with immediately changing immigration policy from day one. You know, so far we have seen the largest number of individuals that have been in detention at one time. Right now, I think the numbers are a little bit over 70,000.

In the LA County region alone we have over 50. We have over 5,500 folks that have been arrested or detained since the start of this new year in LA County alone.

And for those, just a little bit of background on our Rapid Response Network, what was mentioned earlier, we train volunteers to be first responders to either an immigration sighting, ICE sighting or a raid. And so what we do to that end is train folks to be first responders, document.

And it's really important for us to document the human rights and legal abuses that are occurring on the ground, but also to ensure that those individuals who are arrested or detained that we're able to document some information either through their family members, through their friends or co workers.

And to that end, all that information is collected back at CHIRLA, and we're able to synthesize all this data. The Assembly Members mentioned earlier that we have been also producing what we call as heat maps to really demonstrate what zip codes are. Zip codes where there has been an increase or heightened enforcement activities.

And those zip codes, as you might surmise, are mostly zip codes where either there's a large Latino population or a large immigrant population. And where the leadership in that jurisdiction has to be is also individuals of color. And so we're seeing that over policing, over enforcement in those areas as well. In terms of the rapid response network.

CHIRLA is also one of the largest legal service providers in Southern California. And so we are also, we work with many of our colleagues in Southern California that provide direct legal services. And so we partner together. We have a. A list that we call our detention list.

So anytime someone calls any one of our agencies or there's a report, we have an individual's name with their date of birth and their country of origin so that we can all collectively in LA County, go down the list one by one so that we don't miss those reported individuals that we know are in detention.

And to that end, you know, we're sharing the load of the work that is on our plate because one single organization just cannot address the needs that we have at this given moment in time. So we're doing that work.

And then on the back end, what CHIRLA has been doing, which is also new for us because we've had to stretch and grow in many ways and sort of just be able to pivot and address the moment is we're also working with those impacted families.

So as of right now, I think we have over 900 families that we are working with directly through CHIRLA. We meet with them weekly. We discuss any type of needs that they may have. We provide education, we train them.

We're also helping them organize as well around these issues because we need people to not only document the human rights abuses, but to be able to tell their stories in a way that's meaningful.

Part of this work also includes having our policymakers at the state, federal and local level also meet with directly impacted families, because there's nothing like meeting with the direction impacted family in their home to see what the impact has been as a result of the immigration enforcement or the raids.

And so to that end, we're also doing our work on the in order to educate policymakers about how pervasive these raids are, what the level of abuses are, and how it's really impacting the family structure.

And as you know, many of you probably already guessed, like, the majority of the folks that have been arrested have been men, but we do have women that have also been arrested and have. And they have specific needs and issues that also need to be addressed.

But in addition to that, I just wanted to give you a little bit of data of the families that we've been working with directly to give you sort of a flavor of what we've been able to see. So, as mentioned earlier, we have over 900 families that we're working with. We've done over 450 interviews with our family.

Our findings reveal that over 52% of those detained were arrested at work or while commuting to work. Right. So that's an important theme today as well. But most detainees also have been held in Los Angeles county at the Federal Detention Center, B18, which is technically a processing center.

And so folks are only supposed to be there for really a couple of hours. But we have seen folks there as long as two days to up to 14 days.

At the beginning of the raids on June 6, I actually was in D.C. attending a shadow hearing on the disappearances of individuals like Kilmar Obrego and the other and others. And my phone just started blowing up. And so that day that the raid started. Many people who were in B18.

We'Ve been able to document sort of the conditions that have. That have occurred at B18, which have been really just horrible. Those first couple of days, people were not given any food for full on 14 to 16 hours. They were given little juice boxes and maybe a half sandwich or a half frozen burrito.

They were not allowed to have any changes of clothing, no medication. The conditions at B18 were just horrendous. And in addition to that, they were not allowing attorneys access to those buildings where we, as an attorney, we have 24 hours a day, seven days a week, access to our clients.

We're just not given that access for at least the first five or seven days. And so our. So those conditions have been awful. Just here at B18, but also at Adelanto as well. Over 20% of those folks that have been arrested have already been deported.

One out of five have been sent to countries other than their countries of birth. And 71% of those detained, of those detained or deported have dependents who rely solely on them for care. So this is the impact that we're seeing directly with our community.

I will say too that now that we're sort of six months into this process, right, a lot of folks have not been able to bond out of detention because the Trump Administration has interpreted some case law incorrectly.

And so they've been using every tool in their toolbox to not allow people to get out of detention because their sole purpose is to just support anybody that they can. They're basically arresting folks and asking questions later. And I'll talk a little bit more about that.

Excuse me, but at the six month mark when people are in detention, they are eligible for what's called a Rodriguez bond hearing. And so we're starting to have those and we're starting to be successful. CHIRLA has been successful in being in being able to, to bond individuals out.

And so now that people are bonding out, we're also interviewing folks at the back end, right, because they are now able to really document what is happening in detention. And so there are ongoing conversations about, you know, litigation and lawsuits around this issue.

But we are really doing our due diligence to really document the human rights abuses coming out of places like Adelanto and California City and other detention centers.

And what we're finding is that folks are coming out saying that they have not, are not having access to medical care, appropriate medical care, or even the right doses of their medication. We have a couple of individuals that have really precarious healthcare situations.

We have a member whose son is actually up in Tacoma, Washington and her son had a really bad brain injury a couple years ago. And so he is subject to several seizures several times a day almost. And he is still in detention. He has not been able to be bonded out.

So we're trying to work with his attorney up in Seattle to try to see what we can do to get him out because his health care, his health is just really precarious.

The other thing that we're also hearing about, obviously is also not only physical abuse, so it could be detainee to detainee violence that occurs in these detention centers, but we're also hearing about sexual abuse for both men and women.

And so we are working with our partners within the domestic violence, sexual assault sectors to really help us conduct these trauma informed interviews so that we're able to get the information out of individuals so we can start documenting these abuses. And I'll just tell you a quick little. Story.

We had a hearing a couple weeks ago and a gentleman had said, had told us that he was almost sexually abused. And it later came out in at A hearing that he, he said that he was sexually abused.

And so just seeing sort of the trajectory of his story and him being able to say that really hit really deep because I actually worked on the translation of his testimony, so I knew that he had told my colleague that he had almost been sexually assaulted. But at the hearing he, you know, revealed differently.

And so thinking through, like, how do we, how do we process this information, how do we document this from a human rights perspective? How do we also support individuals that are going through this? How do we provide those wraparound services that are critically important because you know, detention does really terrible things to an individual.

Many individuals in the detention centers had never been convicted of a crime. Many of those individuals are fleeing places where they were in war torn situations. They were traumatized in their home countries and now they're being re traumatized by our country and being imprisoned or detained. And many of them have said, look, I've never committed a crime.

Why am I being treated like this for a civil law violation? And I've seen both men and women break down in the detention center.

So it's really important that as a state we continue to, all of us really, we continue to document these abuses and that as a state we continue to push for oversight of detention centers because we do have two state laws that help us.

But we also have a public health official that stated a couple of months ago that he had that he felt no need to go and provide any oversight for the detention center. So how do we make more state actors eligible to become these individuals that can have actual oversight?

And how do we continue to document these abuses and provide these wraparound services? And then one thing I will say too. So CHIRLA also is part of the LA Raids case. We also are part of several other cases.

But one really critical case that we just filed in October is around u visas t visas for trafficking victims and folks that have VAWA self petitions. Right now the federal Administration is basically like I said, arresting first, asking questions later. They are placing folks that have UT visas and vow of self petition individuals into deportation proceedings.

They are arresting and detaining them even though they have what we call a prima facie showing that they have an eligible case. And they also have deferred action from deportation.

The Trump Administration is completely ignoring the fact that they have deferred action and are placing them on planes back to places where they were traumatized or back to places where they can be trafficked again. And so we filed a lawsuit in mid October.

We have a hearing in January and so we'll continue to let you know how that case goes. But I think there are also things that we can do around some of these individuals in terms of protecting them.

You know, many folks do have to go to places like court hearings or churches or places that used to be places that were safe havens. Now because of the Trump Administration, all of that, you know, that memo was rescinded.

And so we really need to think about protocols for different places, how to keep people as safe as possible. We know at CHIRLA or I know that I can't save everybody in this moment in time, but I know that we can try to do our best to try to protect as many people as humanly possible.

And given what's happening on the ground right now, we really need to sort of utilize all our tools, and Chirla is doing that. We're using our case management system to provide these wraparound services. We're using our legal Department to provide direct representation.

And then we're also using our litigation arm to really ensure that, you know, that we don't fall deep into an authoritarian regime and that we're really trying to preserve the protections that we have for immigrants in our country. And I'll stop there because I'm sure there's a lot of questions for the panel, but thank you.

Thank you all so much, not only for being here, but for all the work you do every day. The stories that you shared really lift up just the racial terror that's occurring throughout our communities.

And I just think it's so helpful that you share these stories that even you've experienced personally, and the fact that you're collecting data in each of your respective spaces, because we know how valuable that is when we go to the floor and we advocate for policy change and also just lifting up how resources are working right now for training.

It's always wonderful when you hear the story that someone had their red card and it works. They asserted themselves and they were able to leave. But it's also terrible to hear or watch the videos of people who are screaming that they're a US Citizen and they don't understand why it's happening to them.

And so I just want to appreciate your presence today. But every day, in everything that we're contending with right now with the Federal Government, I did have a couple quick questions before I pass it over to you, one that I thought of as you were speaking. You know.

We are seeing and hearing everything that's happening, but we're also learning about detention centers being developed. Do you think the intention is to deport or to detain?

I think that's a really good question. I mean, I think, you know, there's a. We've known of this private prison industrial complex that we have in this country, and this is sort of now overtaking that process, right? And so I think there's a dual purpose, right, to make some of these corporations a lot richer.

We know what this Administration is all about, but we're also seeing, like, this ethnic cleansing. Like, we just have to call it what it is. You know, it's not just racial profiling. It is ethnic cleansing at its most basic form.

And for us to say, sit here and not be able to document it, not be able to document it, talk about it, demonstrate the impacts. I. I just think we have to be really frank about what's happening in our country. They're not deporting. They're not targeting undocumented Irish folks. And I love my Irish folks, right?

But I mean, just the way I used to work in Seattle. And so we have a lot of undocumented Canadians, right? But they're not, They're. They're not targeting them. They are targeting black and brown individuals, black and brown and indigenous folks, folks who they believe are enemies or are not in line with this Administration.

They're targeting green card holders. Folks that have never had a gap in their immigration process are now in detention. The case that we filed in October about the U visa individuals, the majority of those folks are women.

And that's why I raised that litigation, because I think it's critically important to understand, understand that there's one of our clients, actually, there's a story about her in the New York Times. But one of the women that I met as well through this litigation was a woman that was working in Washington.

She had filed her U visa, everything was proper, and all of a sudden she got arrested and detained. And she's. She was in detention for about four and a half months. And that detention just really tore her family. Her children were really little. Her children have nightmares. They can't.

They can't sleep through the night because they think mom is going to be taken away at any moment. And so these are really pervasive issues, as my colleague mentioned earlier, about how childcare centers are dealing with the issues of really young children. We have to think about what the impact is on families and children.

For children, these are deep impacts and deep imprints, right? They are living in situations as if they're in the middle of a war. We feel like we're in the middle of war, but our community is front and center of this war.

And so when you think about children as young as two having issues around depression, PTSD anxiety, that's going to have long term impacts for their economic, for their educational success and attainment and their economic mobility right in the future.

So as a state, we have to address those issues right now because, you know, the long term impacts are just going to be devastating.

Thank you for lifting that up. I think, you know, the impact to children. Showed up in a new way recently when I talked to one of our local providers. Meet each need with dignity. Mend they provide basic needs here in our community.

They're based in Pacoima and they needed more size 6 diapers because some of the kids are regressing. And it just, it really lifts up how this is impacting them. Socially, emotionally, and their development. And we just had our panel about how much progress we've made and there's so much more to do.

But we're such a critical facet of the economy and of our communities across all of the states of the United States. And now as this happens, you all represent how this is impacting, you know, various industries immediately, but the generational impact is going to be huge.

I wanted to ask a little bit about two things that you mentioned, Dr. Armenta, which was this wage penalty concept. Can you explain how that shows up in second, third generation?

Sure, absolutely. So when social scientists talk about a wage penalty, they'll check earnings and then they'll control for all other factors. So usually people think, well, undocumented workers will earn less money because they have lower education levels of education. And it's really not just that. Scholars of social stratification also control for all of these things.

And, and it really just has to do with how in the United States the greatest predictor of a person's earnings are actually their parents earnings. And so when you have a wage penalty that comes from being out of status, it's transmitted and it shows up, like I said, even into the third generation.

I think the other point to make about this is. I'm sorry, I've lost. My train of thought.

Don't worry. Yeah, it's happening to me like three times a day every day. I think that's really interesting and how it really intersects with Hope's research as well about that, like inherited stability or even I remember going to college and learning that like other people's parents got them cars and like paid for their car insurance.

And I was like, what. This happens? Because I just knew. Right. I. I came here to Mission College and I had two jobs and it just was a different situation that we started out with.

But speaking of how, you know, starting out, you mentioned some statistics about maternal health and we started off with a conversation about that as well. The impacts of detainment on pregnant and nursing mothers.

How do we, this is for any of you, address this additional layer of trauma and stress on the families of the workers you all represent or the families you represent?

We don't have a panel today on mental health, but are there programs that you see that are working, that are in place that we need to invest further in? Is there something else as community that we should be doing to further support families? I think there's already a call to action. Right.

We Know your Rights work, so everyone here needs to repost their Know your Rights messages. And we know spreading stories and uplifting these voices of these incidents is really critical because we go to Sacramento and on the floor we will have colleagues saying that this isn't actually happening.

There's really an effort to pretend that none of this is happening. And so ensuring that folks know it is real, it is happening in real time, is critical. But I just want to know if there is additional, you know, recognizing we're seeing these impacts on families now that are going to, you know, trickle for generations.

Yeah. I think, you know, especially for domestic workers in Los Angeles who were also traumatized by the wildfires and being concerned that they would not be able to leave the houses that they were cleaning to go home to their families, it's a lot of things that we've heard.

We interviewed 100 household workers who lost their jobs because of the Palisades fire. And that was one of the biggest concerns, like, will I get home to my child because I was taking care of somebody else's home or child. The mental health and the overlapping. Disasters. Right. Have impacted overwhelmingly the communities.

And I think that the big concern and the big red alarm is that with the changes happening to Medicaid and Medi Cal, how many more people will lose access to basic health support in General, not to mention. And mental health support where there's not enough of.

So I think this is where we have turned to some of our partners, honestly, in academia, to be completely frank with you, some of the. We've worked with UCLA mental health support teams to come and talk to our workers and their families and staff to be completely transparent.

But I think also thinking long term, how do we integrate that as well with some of our ancestral and cultural spiritual practices as well. That's something that we've been leaning upon as well and figuring out how to weave those pieces, especially given how many of our Indigenous communities have been impacted as well.

So really trying to figure out that intersection is what we've been doing with people from UCLA and usc, especially as those safety nets continue to disappear.

Can I just add, too, I think it's really important for us to understand sort of the Medi Cal. Proposals that have been on the table. We are seeing many folks saying that they're getting disenrolled, and we think some of this disenrollment is pure misinformation.

So really making sure that our folks are enrolled because as of if they are not, as of January 1st of next year, they're not going to be able to re enroll.

And I will say that I haven't touched upon this issue, but we have been working on cases of individuals that were in Ayes detention at a hospital in UCLA Harbor. And one thing that happened in that case I can say is that we were working to ensure that that patient had his Medi Cal covered.

And the hospital refused to give us his medical records to supply it to Medi Cal to ensure that he was able to preserve his insurance, his Medi Cal insurance. And so the hospital was trying to bypass us.

Even though we had a signed release that attorneys used to get records, they would not turn over the medical records because their claim was Ayes is going to pay for his medical care. And we said, that doesn't matter. We need to make sure that he has access to his medical record so that he could preserve his medical.

So that when he gets released from the hospital, he can have that rehabilitative care covered. And so these are tweaks that we really, that we, I mean, things that we need to think about in terms of the broader health care delivery system here in California.

That's really helpful, the policy considerations we can look at in incidences like that. Why capturing the story is so important, because then you can have the health chair at a select Committee hearing about this gap and this issue that occurred so that we can find resolutions. Assembly Member.

Who said what the what. But you know, that's not what I said when I heard that.

Well, I just want to thank you all for demonstrating what it means to have Latina Power and representation in all facets of our infrastructure and work and just honor not only the stories that you were able to share based in the true experience, but also just lift up what it means to have people who are ensuring that our immigrant community is protected.

That and putting to the truth my thing that it is how Latinas roll in power and being able to do that. I also just wanted to lift up that I always sit in these conversations and just think about all the different tools that we have at our disposal in the state.

We certainly have the power to be able to provide legislation, to do oversight. And very thankful that you brought some areas related to that in our healthcare. And then we have the power to make sure that we are protecting all of our people here through legal action. One of the things that's always baffled me.

Or not baffled, it's frustrated me that the state of California essentially has to make a claim of financial harm in order to be able to establish standing, to be able to sue on behalf of the State of California.

And that we've finally reached a point where each of you, from your various perspectives, have been able to demonstrate that financial harm. We started out with Dr. Marcias talking about the fact that we will lose $23 billion a year.

As a result of the mass deportations that are happening in generated income from our communities, from our Latino communities here in the state of California. And then we also heard.

I just did some kind of extrapolated math from what you shared, that for LA County alone, it will cost us $47 million a year to be able to engage in that. Prison industrial complex. And I do believe it is true that we are enriching. Our private. Prison system now with our deportation centers increasing.

While we are doing that, while we are costing California an additional taxpayers $47 million a year, I think it's also important to just stress.

Each of you talked about something where the work and infrastructure that you have developed is enabling us to be able to not only have a front line for our future economic growth and development, but also to be able to protect this moment that we're in and ensure that we have something as legislators to really look at, to build upon.

We heard from my fellow Boricua Megan, the importance of our worker centers right now and the extended role that our worker centers play in health care, in being able to be frontline for legal defense and support. I think that's really important.

We heard from Ms. Camacho that our CDFIs, our community development financial institutions, are a place right now where we can invest in infrastructure to ensure that we have an opportunity to protect people who are trying to build generational wealth through their participation in what has to be the alternative economy because of these mass deportation policies of the Federal Government.

Our child care centers and our child care workers being essentially the backbone not only of our childcare system, largely Latinas, but also ensuring that our children have the ability. With 18% of our children. Coming from undocumented parent households, that's nearly 20% of California's children who are experiencing this reality and fear right now.

We heard about the healthcare impacts when we have these spots and these generated trauma moments for our communities. And we also heard the importance of making sure that our research institutions, through a Latino focused lens, has the ability and resources to be able to make the case.

So I'm walking away with the sensibility that not only are the mass deportation policies of the Federal Government intentionally costing us generated income, they're depriving us of our ability to ensure generational wealth. And it is costing us millions, if not billions of dollars to be able to. Participate in.

The cost of that immigration policy for the state of California. And that is a very strong economic financial harm argument. So I know who I'm going to be talking to when I go home today on. The plane back to the Bay Area.

And I know that our fellow legislators are going to be really leaning in to some of the additional ways that we can support the infrastructure, particularly as it ensures that our Latina community Members are protected and have a shot at being able to survive in this California that we have to live in right now. So thank you.

Thank you and thank you so much to all of our panelists. We're so grateful to you for being here today.

You lifted up our next panel, which is the social safety net that's supposed to be there to help catch our community members who need it, that already needed a lot of work, but now there's actual holes being cut into it. So thank you so much. Please give a round of applause to our panelists.

And I would like to invite Dr. Aquino, Executive Director of Latino Coalition for a Healthy California. Aneli Martin Gonzalez, Legislative Assistant for the California Immigrant Policy center, and Dr. Feliza Ortiz Lincoln, Executive Vice President for the Campaign for College opportunity to come join us on stage. Please give them a warm welcome.

Muy buenas tardes, Chair Bonta and Assemblywoman Rodriguez. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. I am Dr. Seciah Aquino, and I have the honor of serving as the Executive Director of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California.

At LCHC, we are committed to advancing and protecting Latine and indigenous health through policy change and advocacy. We pride ourselves in translating community solutions into equitable policy and lasting systemic change. I want to begin by grounding us in the reality that the health of all Californians is fragile right now.

We are still recovering from the global COVID 19 Pandemic that devastated our communities. The socioeconomic disparities that widened during the Pandemic have not healed. Families continue to experience acute Covid cases, long Covid, and ongoing financial instability that make consistent access to health care all the more critical.

But our communities are not only navigating a public health crisis, we are also experiencing what we at LCHC have coined as a fear Pandemic. This fear is driven by anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies with very real consequences.

It has deepened mental health disparities, created chronic stress, trauma, and undermined the physical, emotional, and economic wellbeing of our communities. When people are afraid to go to work, go to school, or even step outside, their health and their livelihoods suffer.

It is with this fragile and unequal landscape that HR 1 and recent Medi Cal cuts must be understood. To understand the magnitude of these policy changes, we must start with who relies on Medi Cal. Over half of all Medi Cal recipients are women.

Over half are also Latina and in fact, 42% of all Latinas in California are enrolled in Medi Cal, meaning that nearly half of all Latina women in our state rely on this program for basic health care access.

Despite California's leadership in expanding health care through the Affordable Care Act and Health for All, Latino communities still face the highest uninsured rates in the state. 14% of Latinas and 19% of Latino men remain uninsured. California has been a leader in the effort to make health care a universal human right.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act and the Health for All expansions that were passed in California, California had one of the lowest uninsured rates in the country at just under 5%. These gains, unfortunately, are now threatened by federal and state policies that place the greatest burden on the very communities who rely on Medi Cal the most.

The policies passed in HR 1, including work requirements and more burdensome renewal requirements, will lead to more than a million Latinos to lose their Medi Cal coverage. Seeing that Latinas make up a significant portion of the Medi Cal population, Latina women are particularly vulnerable to the new HR 1 policies.

These requirements do not reflect the realities of Latina labor, caregiving, multiple jobs, seasonal work, much of which is unpaid or sometimes unrecognized. Instead, these rules create structural barriers designed to disenroll families. Compounding this, California's '25-'26 budget imposes freezes, new premiums, and cuts to dental benefits for undocumented Californians. These reductions are already causing real harm.

It's causing fear and confusion. We have a Promotoras De Salud Network, Pasa Lavos. We have a listening tour. And so, we keep track of community needs and priorities throughout the year. And a lot of the information and updates that we're receiving from these promotoras is a lot of confusion and fear around what is true right now.

Many believe that Medi Cal is no longer available to them. Many believe they have to start paying premiums right away this year. And because they couldn't afford it, they disenrolled. And many are fearful of their immigration status and having any kind of relationship with a government entity.

So, we know that the chilling effect is taking an even greater hold of our gente. We're also seeing long lasting negative outcomes. These reductions in the form of freezes, cuts to dental benefits, and newly required premiums will leave Latinas more vulnerable to poverty and health disparities that will have lifelong impacts on life outcomes for Latinas and their families.

People are also disenrolling. We know that people are feeling the chilling effects of the policies that were passed this year. The Health for All expansions enrolled over a million people in healthcare coverage.

August 2025 data provided by the Department of Healthcare Services reported that 705,266 Latina adults were receiving full scope Medi Cal through the Health for All expansions. This was a drop from just March this year by about 12,000 individuals. So, we know that the chilling effect is real. These harms are not abstract policy debates.

They are lived realities for California families and we have a responsibility to protect them. As we heard today, California is home to the largest Latina population in the United States. Latinas power industries, care for families, anchor communities, and contribute significantly to our economy.

California has both a responsibility and an opportunity to ensure Latinas have the health care they need, including through Medi Cal, to support themselves and their families. Protecting Medi Cal is not only a health care imperative, it is gender equity policy, economic policy, and community stability policy. When Latinas lose health care access, their ripple effects touch entire communities.

With that responsibility in mind, there are clear steps California can take right now to protect coverage, reduce harm, and continue leading the nation in health equity. First, we must continue our commitment to health for all. This expansion has been transformative. California must reverse recent Medi Cal cuts.

As the world's fourth largest economy, we must not balance the budget on the backs of our most vulnerable. Undocumented residents who keep the state running and pay into the system with more than 83 billion in state taxes and contribute to a California Latino GDP of over a trillion dollars are not asking for a handout.

We're asking for health justice. Second, HR 1 implementation. We must exempt undocumented Californians from HR 1 and post eligibility hurdles like work requirements. Undocumented Californians already face barriers to maintaining Medi Cal coverage through state freezes, premiums, and limited benefits, requiring this population to adhere to newly federally imposed requirements.

And it would compound the administrative burden to keep their Medi Cal. California holds the state power to protect via our state specific funds. We must continue to invest in mental health resources for immigrant communities.

We heard today, right, about the stress, the trauma, the fear that is exemplifying those mental health disparities and we've even heard reports of suicides. We must reinvest in outreach by community healthcare workers and promotoras de salud, ensuring that we're providing CBO's multiyear funding to ensure that our promatoras are being supported and provided for their work in ensuring that system navigation to assist in these changes with Medi Cal eligibility.

We must also think big. We must reimagine a health care system that protects all Californians, regardless of who sits in the White House. We should not simply go back to pre-ACA mechanisms.

Now more than ever, California must reimagine a health system capable of withstanding federal uncertainty. As the fourth largest economy in the world, California should behave like a global economic leader.

Most global economies at our level offer universal coverage and California should seize this moment, not just to repair the system, but to redesign one that was never created by us or for us.

We have an opportunity to build a system that fully reflects our values. And finally, develop a sustainable revenue solution, including requiring large corporations to pay their fair share. Even the most humble undocumented Californians still pay taxes. There is no justification for large profitable corporations contributing less than the communities most harmed by health inequities.

If we are serious about health justice, we must be serious about equitable revenue generation. Members of the Committee, we are at a defining moment. HR 1 and state level reductions threaten to undo more than a decade of progress in health care access for Latino and immigrant families, especially Latinas. Californians must choose a different path.

We must protect Medi Cal, uphold our values, and ensure that health care remains a right, not a privilege, for every person who calls the state home. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Good afternoon, Chair and members. My name is Anallely Martin with the California Immigrant Policy Center and the Co-Lead of the Food for All Coalition in partnership with Nourish California. Want to thank Senator Rodriguez for championing our Food for All on the Assembly. To start, it's important to recognize how significant our Latino community is in the state.

Latinos make up 40% of our state's population, while immigrants make up 28%, the largest share out of any state. Nearly half of California's immigrants are from Latin America. Roughly 26.6% of Latinos in California use CalFresh assistance, according to data from 2023. More specifically, one out of three Latinas in our state are on CalFresh food assistance.

When vulnerable communities like immigrant and Latino communities lose access to food assistance, it does not stop with that individual. Those consequences are felt widely across households, communities, and local economies. Specifically, HR 1 cuts CalFresh and expands CalFresh exclusions based on immigration status to categories of immigrants who have long been eligible.

The humanitarian immigrants affected and will no longer be eligible for CalFresh and SNAP include refugees, asylees, people granted withholding of removal, trafficking survivors, survivors of domestic violence, and persons granted humanitarian parole for at least—for a period of at least one year. From 2012 to 2022, we have seen an increase in refugees and asylum seekers from Latin American countries.

For example, nationals from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala combined represented close to 22% of all people granted asylum in 2021, compared to just 4% in 2010.

Latinas who have recently fled these countries to escape violence or instability are trying to build new lives in California and will soon lose eligibility for CalFresh, becoming more at risk of food insecurity.

Additionally, HR 1 made changes to the work requirements for CalFresh, which puts about half a million Californians at risk of losing their benefits, according to estimates from the California Department of Social Services.

When work requirements are active, this rule enforces a harsh three-month time limit out of every 36 months on people who cannot prove they meet certain work requirements or exemptions. More specifically, HR 1 will expand the age range that people are subject to the work requirement, increasing it to 64 rather than 54.

Also, it expands the work requirements to adults whose youngest dependence is age 14 or older rather than 18 and older, and removes past exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth.

In practice, this will mean that older adults near retirement age and Latina mothers with teenage children could soon lose their CalFresh, and we can expect these impacts to disproportionately affect Latina women, given that according to a 2024 analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California, women are less likely to participate in the labor workforce than men.

Furthermore, labor force participation for Latina women is at 74%, which is lower than participation among black, Asian, and white women whose participation is closer to 80%.

Educational attainment, immigration status, and language barriers are important factors shaped by systemic barriers that impact the opportunities for Latinas in the labor market, which demonstrates why harmful rule changes from HR 1 will have adverse effects on the economic stability and food security.

Losing access to food benefits means higher risk of food insecurity, which we know immigrant and Latino Californians are already disproportionately impacted by. A 2020 study found that 1 in 3 Latinx adults face food insecurity in their household. It was found that 950,000 of those adults lived in households with children.

More recently, a 2024 study found that Latina women who are the head of their household are about 15% more likely to experience food insecurity than their non-parent counterparts.

Removing access to CalFresh and Latinas, who, if they are mothers, are often responsible for the caregiving responsibilities, will increase hunger in vulnerable households that already struggle with food insecurity and affect their economic stability. In addition to deep cuts to CalFresh, HR 1 allocates $170 billion in funding to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.

So far, the Trump Administration has terrorized our immigrant communities through mass raids and deportations, with over 5,000 Californians detained since June 6th. These mass detentions have disproportionately affected Latino communities and have sparked widespread fear among our community members.

People are afraid to leave their homes to go to work, attend school, seek medical care, and even purchase basic needs like food. The fear will continue to intensify if Latina women feel like accessing food benefits, whether through CalFresh or food banks, and will put their livelihood as well as their families at risk.

The chilling effect of the Trump Administration's mass detention and deportation agenda is devastating and will have long term impacts on Latinas—Latina—women's food security. Combined with rising prices and sloped job market, we already see these impacts today. CIPC's partners across the state are currently reporting record numbers of people seeking food pantries and mutual aid.

Although we appreciate the Legislature's allocation of $20 million to the California food banks, they are a limited resource. Given the ongoing attacks from our Federal Government. The Legislature must step up to protect our communities and their access to essential food benefits.

We urge the Legislature to hold the line by protecting our investments in the California Food Assistance Program for its planned expansion in 2027 to support our immigrant communities who have historically been excluded from food—food benefits—and the newly excluded population under HR 1.

By eliminating the age-based exclusions currently in the expansion, we would also ensure that all of the newly excluded 74,000 humanitarian immigrants will have access to food and reduce the long-term harms of HR 1.

We can end harmful exclusions from our state's food safety net and ensure that everyone, no matter their status, has access the food they need to live and thrive. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair Rodriguez and Assemblywoman Bonta. My name is Doctora Feliza Ortiz-Licon, and I serve as the Executive Vice President of the Campaign for College Opportunity. We're a nonpartisan organization committed to ensuring all Californians have equitable access to higher education so we can build a strong workforce, economy, and democracy.

Today's discussion matters because federal policy decisions, especially HR 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, have profound implications for the economic security and educational attainment of Latinas. Higher education continues to be one of the most effective tools for upward mobility, yet federal actions are reshaping access in ways that disproportionately impact California Latino/Latina students.

HR 1, enacted this summer, is a sweeping package of tax, health, and social policy changes, including adjustments to benefit programs, loan structures, and accountability measures. Many of these provisions directly impact Latina students and their families, in particular, around affordability, basic needs, and graduate pathways.

I want to begin with affordability and basic needs because they set the foundation for student academic success. HR 1 expands work requirements for Snap, or CalFresh in California, as explained, limiting benefits to three months and three years for individuals without dependents unless they meet a 20-hour work week or activity requirement.

These changes place students in a very difficult position. Latinos in California represent 55% of CalFresh participants. Many participants, including college students, balance caregiving responsibilities with low wage and unstable work, losing up to $300 a month in food assistance for not meeting the new work requirement is more than a financial loss.

It undermines food security, increases stress, and can push students to stop out of school before earning a credential or degree. For students and families already navigating the financial instability that may come with college, these provisions will increase hardship, specifically among Latinas and immigrant households, where many students are responsible for both their own needs and family contributions.

Affordability challenges are further exacerbated at the graduate level; HR 1 eliminates graduate plus loans by July 2026. These loans currently allow students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance, making many graduate programs financially possible.

Without them, students will be forced into private loans with higher interest rates and fewer protections, or students may simply choose not to pursue advanced or professional degrees. Latinas are increasingly pursuing advanced degrees. Over the last three decades, more than a million Latinas nationwide have earned graduate credentials.

Removing access to graduate plus loans will price many students out of medicine, education, and other fields where California urgently needs talent and where Latinas remain underrepresented. The result will be fewer Latinas in high paying professions, wider wage gaps, and slower upper mobility.

Beyond HR 1, current federal immigration actions are contributing to an environment of fear that undermines educational attainment. Increased immigration enforcement has disrupted families, reduced school attendance, and triggered declines in academic achievement. On college campuses, research shows that undocumented students and students from mixed status families are experiencing elevated stress and delaying graduation. These dynamics have direct consequences for persistence and completion.

Currently, California enrolls more than 100,000 undocumented college students, the largest number in the nation. Nearly half of undocumented students are Latina/Latino. Lack of work authorization remains one of the most significant barriers they face, so they're limiting both affordability and career opportunity. At the same time, federal efforts have targeted state policies that support undocumented students.

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a complaint against California for providing in state tuition despite the fact that AB 540 is a lawful and effective policy that expands opportunity and reduces equity gaps. Finally, I want to acknowledge the Federal Administration's decision to eliminate $350 million in discretionary funding for minority-serving institutions, MSIs, which include Hispanic serving institutions.

California has 167 MSIs, including nearly all community colleges, 21 of 22 CSU campuses, and every UC campus. These institutions provide essential supports that boost retention and graduate Latina/Latino/Latinx students. Without this funding, programs that help students persist in STEM access, tutoring, and complete their degrees will be scaled back or eliminated.

The loss of MSI funding weakens workforce diversity and diminishes the state's economic strength. California has made real progress. Latina graduation rates have improved significantly at the CSU and UC, proving that equity efforts work when resourced and sustained, but the federal actions I've outlined threaten to reverse momentum.

We urge you and other state leaders to continue defending and protecting undocumented American students, to expand support for basic needs, and invest in MSI institutions that serve our communities. The stakes are high.

Your response will determine whether tens of thousands of Latina students in California can pursue their education, enter the workforce, contribute to the state's future and uphold our democracy. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you all so much. You all represent lifelines that are supporting our families and help break cycles of poverty. And you really did such an amazing job of illuminating how all of these federal decisions are going to be putting us backwards and also the role the state is playing as well during all these decisions.

I will pass it off to my colleague first.

Thank you. I did want to just highlight where we started with Dr. Aquino raising a very important fundamental question which is given the fact that we know that HR 1 is going to have such devastating impacts in combination with also the potential elimination of the ACA will risk, which we didn't talk about.

The redeterminations and the work requirements alone are sure that the intention of those is to disenroll millions of people in the state of California. It could be up to 13.5 million people who are on Medi Cal and I think something like 3 million people who will be forced to get off just with those two work determining factors.

So, the fundamental question raised, I think, is given the impacts that we know of HR 1 on eligibility and disenrollment, what should the state be doing right now as it relates to the three major changes it made around enrollment freezes, premium co pays, and cuts to dental benefits? That is an overlap that is beyond devastating.

But we made those changes prior to in our budget, prior to fully understanding the impacts of HR 1 and the policies associated with that. So, Dr. Aquino, can you just—I'll throw you a softball and hope you answer that question.

Thank you so much for that and I really appreciate your leadership as well. We know you were in the fight with us pushing back. Both of you. Thank you so much. You know, we are advocating hard for us to be able to reconsider that and push back.

We are at a point where we've heard all day today, right, the health impacts of everything that's happening will have a multi-generational effect on families today, tomorrow, and for years to come. And so, we need to ensure that we are recommitting ourselves to health for all.

We need—this is the time to be creative, to really take a look at our budget. Where are perhaps some opportunities to be able to push back, right? Really put everything on the table and not just say, you know, this program is being extended to the undocumented.

It's othering our undocumented communities when we know they are core to the—to the state—and the state's wellbeing and our economy as well. So, we owe it to undocumented Californians to really do our homework on the back end to see how we can reverse those freezes, those changes, pull back on the premiums.

And I know you both fought, you know, to lower that premium for where it started, but it still poses an economic burden on families and especially for our community because we live in multi-generational homes, multi status, mixed status homes. So, we definitely need to do that.

And yeah, and that's part of why I mentioned we are in this key position to reimagine what that could look like. And yes, that'll take many years to expand of revenue generation, but we got to get started somewhere. And those budget constraints are very real.

But there's also different pieces in the budget that were allocated for things that were not essential to the wellbeing of our Californians. And so, we need to take a very close look at those, have honest conversations, and protect the health of Californians.

You know, I would love to ask my more seasoned colleague, actually, that situation was really hard for a lot of members. And I know as a freshman member, I was posed with a trailer bill that included funding for food, funding for maternal health care, while simultaneously agreeing to retracting our commitment to health care for all.

I was, I am—I know there are so many people who are, who remain committed that I have, I have to have faith that we're going to ensure that we fix what was done.

But the way that it's packaged and posed to legislatures to make a choice, to take from one to ensure we have the other, is really faulty in the way it's presented and the way it's voted upon. And I might be going out of bounds of this select Committee, but I just wonder if—is there a way to advocate to ensure we separate these really big policy questions that have huge consequences from these gigantic bills that have so many things in them?

Well, Assemblymember, Chair, I think I'd answer that in a couple different ways. The first is as legislators, I believe that our fundamental responsibility is to, first, do no harm. And that is a very low bar. Our bar should actually be how can we ensure that every single Californian has the ability to thrive?

So, there is the need to make sure that we are kind of living with that fundamental North Star as individual legislators. I think as a result of that, the second thing that we always need to ask ourselves is do we have the humility enough as a Legislature or as people sitting inside agencies to be able to call the question when it's presented to us about the decisions that we've already made.

And I'm actually very thankful that one of the things that the speaker on our side, the Assembly, is doing is having us take a hard look at some of the implementation of our legislation, and this certainly kind of fits the category of at least forecasting now that we have information that we didn't have before around how we operate.

And I think it's always with the third way that I'd answer that is that it's always with kind of research on our side.

The people who are actually, you know, at the county level, at the city level, municipalities, are frontline organizations who are able to inform our legislation that need to have to be able to come to the table to share that in a way that we can digest it and think differently about how we move forward with policy.

So, I certainly want to thank you for bringing forward this select Committee at this moment in time and having this be a part of your, the conversation that you wanted to introduce here, because it, it will set the stage for us to be able to ask some of those fundamental questions as we move into January with the benefit of our frontline organizations and our research, to be able to call those important questions. So, I'm hopeful.

Yes. Well, I have to have faith, right? That's, like you said, it's what we're there for. And the theme that has been coming up with these different panels is, you know, how this affects the next generation. And while some of these policies are specifically targeting adults and their eligibility, I want to offer to you a space about how this impacts mixed status households.

All of the members of a family, some that may be eligible, but of course, if your parent isn't getting dental care, is your child? I don't know if any of you want to speak to that.

You know, especially in healthcare, we know that access to one member actually increases access to the rest of the family, especially if it's a Latina who is making the appointments and taking the kids and the husband to—their partner—to the offices, which we are—right, we do it all.

But you know, we know that when that fear of even going outside the home or going into a clinic or a hospital for those continued appointments, be it for acute care or chronic disease, and community members are unable to make those appointments, right, it's not only impacting their health right there and then; it could potentially evolve to a more expensive, more emergency type of situation that would cost the family and the state more, but also put lives at risk.

And we know that those same family members then have to show up to multiple jobs to make sure they can put food on the table.

And thus, it'll have an impact on the full family, in addition to grandparents who might be in the home and not working and doing a lot of the caretaking for children, and they now don't have either access to their medicines or to the resources that the other folks in the home were bringing in.

So, we know the effects go beyond just that family and to community and ultimately, the state.

For education, we obviously know that in the Latino community it tends to be a family decision, so we are seeing the impact to students from mixed status families, whether they opt not to pursue college or apply for FAFSA or even KEDA because they don't want to reveal their parents' or spouse legal status.

And I think one thing that, you know, of course, we're centering our conversation on Latinas, but I just want to emphasize how important the role of women is. The biggest indicator for a student's academic success is their mother's educational attainment. Outside of school indicators, the biggest indicator will be the mother's educational attainment.

And so, it is critical that we continue investing because they are the ones that will project where the students will succeed, where they will be able to continue their educational experience.

So, again, I think we're putting a lot on women, but I do think that that has to be a special focus because women are often the culture carriers, they're the family carriers, and they often lead the path statistically on what is predicted for their families.

So much is changing right now in the moment, all of these policies in this coming year, and as we learned from Hope's report, Latinas and Asian women are more reluctant to taking on debt when they pursue their higher education.

And so, now, the question really is about taking on that additional debt or foregoing that opportunity, which is something that is going to be a hard conversation for a lot of families to have. And another choice right now, right, is enrollment, with this cutoff moment happening with a lot of fear to put your name down on these documents at a government office, but also the desire, of course, to retain health care for as many people as we can.

So, what role could community organizations play or local governments or even our offices in maintaining program access?

I can jump in, feel free. You know, I think the most important piece that we're hearing from community right now is they just need the facts, right? They need the facts to make decisions for themselves. They need to assess the risk for themselves and their families. And so, for offices, for community-based organizations, the goal is to get all the facts out to community members.

How do we do that? Ensuring that we're connecting with networks, both communications and trust networks. For us, those are promotoras, right? These are leaders in the community who have built those networks over years.

There's a very important Medi Cal benefit that was extending to CHWs and promotoras that needs to be protected this year, ensure it's not on the chopping block, and to look for other opportunities to fund CBOs to ensure that they're hiring those promotoras and at the same time, building those wealth pipelines, because we know those dollars for the promotora will go into that family and that community while they do the hard work of continuing to enroll and get the information out so folks know how to navigate the system.

No, I, I agree with my colleague here. I think it's important for folks to know the facts. I think in the food space as well, you know, these eligibilities haven't happened just yet. We're waiting for, for requirements from CDSS.

So, I think just letting folks know ahead of time before these exclusions are implemented that folks are aware and can prep ahead of time is going to be really important.

And I think lastly, you know, as we are witnessing the cuts at the federal level and even when we saw SNAP disappear for families and the lack of our ability at the state level to fill every hole that is being created and facing this new year with this new budget, what would you want policymakers to keep in mind as we face another, possibly more difficult year, in needing to prioritize protecting our communities? You can each offer your thoughts.

I think that yes, we're living in tough times in higher education. We are really at the crosshairs of a lot of political conversations. I think California has put a really strong down payment on higher education, and I think that there's of course a lot of things that we want to preserve. We want to preserve MSI funding designations.

We want to make sure there's investment on students like myself and many of us here that are first generation Americans, first generation college goers, but I think that there's also building the policy conditions and building narrative can sometimes be free of cost. The narrative right now is if is higher education really worth it? Right.

Given all the, how expensive it is, given all of the attacks. And I think that, you know, I'm the mother of two, I finished paying my student loans maybe five years ago and in two years, I will have to pay full tuition for my, my son. Right? That is the reality. Do I regret it? Absolutely not.

Because education has not only given me economic mobility and security and stability, it widened my view, it given, it has given me a higher quality of life. Civic engagement. I think that it's important for us to make sure that students have choices and that we don't narrow the narrative to work or college.

It can't be work and college. And if you need to have a longer on ramp, that's fine. But as California, we need to make sure that we meet our goal of educating 70% of our student population by 2030. I think that it's important that we don't make decisions based on a current financial pinch, but really think ahead.

We are the fourth largest economy and that should be the case for every student. All of us can contribute and we shouldn't make decisions on who goes to college or who goes directly to the workforce. It needs to be college and career. And that's part of narrative and that's part of making policy decisions.

And yes, we need investments, but we could all support that students should have options and choices and that is free of cost.

Yeah, just that I think, I think you made a really great point earlier, Assemblymember Rodriguez, with how do we ensure that folks in the Legislature understand that this isn't just one issue? Like, folks don't just need food access, so they just don't need health care. They need all of these different things.

So, it's like, how can we ensure that our policymakers don't see these issues as like individual issues, but as intersectional, is going to be really important. Dr. Aquino also mentioned, like revenue generation, I think is going to be really important as well.

Working with us as advocates to find a way where we can be creative to ensure that we're not cutting programs that support and uplift our immigrant and Latino communities. But that's, yeah, but continue to support them and not cut those programs, I think is going to be really important as we look into this next year.

And I'll add, I also really appreciate the point you made, Assemblywoman, about how the topic is packaged, right, and how you're—we're basically pitting each other with very essential and needed benefits.

And there needs to be a push for us to do things differently, for us to be able to push back and say, no, that's not how we should talk about this issue. And we have a perfect case study. During COVID 19, there were a lot of federal supports that came in to strengthen the safety net.

So, we know that they supported health, rental assistance, food benefits, and when we supported and strengthened the safety net, we actually pulled 12 million people out of poverty across the US, so we know that when we cover the social determinants of health, we are ensuring that communities are not only healthy, but that the economy is healthy.

And I think that point is really important to also drive home because sometimes, you know, we just look at the price tag, but we don't see it as an investment. And yes, health care is expensive, but it's an investment in the state.

And so, when we talk about the Latino GDP being at a trillion and being the, the economic force that pushed California to be that fourth largest nation, we're not just giving out this benefit to the pobrecitos, right? No, these are powerful people that make up 40% of the population. By 2050, will be 50% of the population.

So, we are strong and we need access in order to continue driving our California forward.

Thank you all so much. Can we please give a round of applause to this panel? We now want to provide a space for any public comment that would like to be provided today by anyone who has attended before we close out this Committee hearing.

If anyone would like to provide a comment during this portion of the agenda, we invite you to come up to the microphone.

We look forward to hearing your recommendations on what the California government can do to support Latinas in the workforce and navigate the cuts to the safety net programs which are being exacerbated by the current federal policy implementation.

We're going to have as much as 30 minutes dedicated to this if that's needed, but three minutes each, please, and starting with the folks here in the room and then we'll go over to those joining us virtually. Go ahead.

Wonderful. Can you all hear me? Maybe. No. No. Okay. Oh, there it is. I think so. Yes. Hello, Chair and Assemblymember Bonta. Thank you so much for this hearing during such a critical time.

My name is Danila Rodriguez, and I serve as a Policy Advocacy Senior Manager at Immigrants Rising, which is a nonprofit organization that provides higher education, entrepreneurship, career, and mental health resources and policy advocacy so that undocumented people can gain education, pursue careers, and build brighter future for themselves and their communities. Like I said, I just want to, before I get to the recommendations, I do want to take a moment to thank you both for your leadership.

As was stated by the wonderful panelists that we heard today, you know, during such a critical time as a freshman, just, you know, your leadership and the leadership of Assemblymember Bonta has definitely been felt and as a proud member of the district, born and raised, can, you know, a particularly heartfelt thank you.

Though not exhaustive, I would like to name just three key opportunities where leadership and support from this Committee, but really the rest of the Legislature, can support to proactively ensure that Latinas, regardless of their immigration status, can thrive in California.

First, on the topic of higher education, we would like to see continued funding and resources for K-12 systems of higher education and the California Student Aid Commission so that they can support—continue to support—students in completing a California DREAM Act application and ultimately enroll, persist, and succeed in higher education.

Secondly, we would like to see the funding—we would like to see funding available for college students regardless of immigration status so that they can have access to paid and career building opportunities.

And lastly, we urge you to reinvest in the SEED Program or the SEED Initiative, which stands for the Social Entrepreneurship for Economic Development program, that provides micro grants, technical assistance, and entrepreneurial training to individuals with limited English proficiency and immigrants to support them in starting or scaling a small business aimed at addressing a social problem or meeting a community need, especially as was discussed by the HOPE Report and many other panelists, knowing that Latinas represent a large share of the entrepreneurship population in California.