The Public-Sector Union Behind L.A. Immigration Agitation
SEIU California expands its membership and its coffers by trying to bring open borders.
The week’s riots in Los Angeles kicked off with the June 6 arrest of David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union’s California chapter. You might expect a union boss to favor immigration enforcement in the name of protecting his members’ jobs. But SEIU California has built its brand—and its business—by obliterating the line between legal and illegal immigration. Operating as an open-borders lobby shop that also organizes workers, it has for four decades amassed political and cultural power in the Golden State for the purpose of undermining federal authority over immigration.
Alerted by activists who monitor the movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in the city, Mr. Huerta led a group that attempted to block federal agents from executing search warrants at a warehouse in the city’s Fashion District. ICE agents asked Mr. Huerta and others to clear a driveway for official vehicles. A federal criminal complaint alleges he rallied his comrades to “stop the vehicles” and told them, “It’s a public sidewalk, they can’t stop us.” Mr. Huerta refused a federal agent’s order to move out of the driveway. He struggled with the officer, stumbled and fell but continued fighting. He was reportedly pepper-sprayed, handcuffed and taken to a hospital before being moved to the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Mr. Huerta is charged with conspiracy to impede an officer, which can carry up to six years in prison. Following his arraignment Monday, he was released on a $50,000 appearance bond. By then he was already being hailed as a hero by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state’s largest newspapers, and union leaders from the United Farm Workers, the Los Angeles teachers union and the California Federation of Labor. Even the Screen Actors Guild voiced its support.
Mr. Huerta declared himself a victim of police violence and a representative of something universal. “What happened to me is not about me,” he said in an SEIU statement. “This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening.” But there’s another possible factor in Mr. Huerta’s arrest and the ensuing violence: money.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. Afscme, SEIU’s membership, and therefore its revenue, have fallen by half. Always an explicit part of the union’s business plan, illegal immigrants are now more important to SEIU than ever. “Our movement—building power for working people—isn’t just for those who have called the U.S. their home since birth. It’s for everyone,” the union declares. SEIU grasped that growth opportunity before most others. When Mr. Huerta helped launch the union’s Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign in 1988, he didn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
Early in President Trump’s first term, SEIU helped pass SB 54, California’s sanctuary-state law, and AB 450, which requires employers to notify workers of ICE enforcement and bars them from verifying immigration status without state approval. AB 450 imposes fines of up to $25,000 on private businesses for each violation. SEIU cast these laws as moral imperatives in the fight against “white nationalist hate” and “anti-immigrant attacks.”
In 2022, having failed for decades to organize workers in the fast-food industry, SEIU persuaded state lawmakers and the governor to establish the state’s Fast Food Council. Composed of SEIU officials, Democrats appointed by the governor, two SEIU-supported state lawmakers and two industry representatives, the council is empowered to set wages and work rules. One of those rules bars fast-food employers from inquiring into the immigration status of employees and applicants.
Following Mr. Trump’s November 2024 win, SEIU backed Mr. Newsom’s “emergency funding” of nonprofits that work with the union to oppose federal law enforcement and provide pro bono legal support for illegal aliens. It ran point on organizing a coalition of “immigrant rights advocates” who surveil federal immigration officers. One group in that coalition runs the hotline that activists used to report the movement of ICE agents toward the warehouse where Mr. Huerta was arrested.
There have been efforts to stop the madness. In 1994, 59% of California voters supported Proposition 187. Backed by Gov. Pete Wilson, that proposal prohibited the distribution of state benefits to illegal immigrants—until a federal judge accepted the Clinton administration’s claim that Proposition 187 violated the federal government’s sovereignty over border security.
It’s a measure of the state’s departure from federal authority that California governors extended full Medi-Cal benefits to all illegal immigrants—first to children, then young adults and seniors, and finally, in 2024, to everyone, at an annual cost of $10 billion. It was a win-win for Mr. Huerta. Medi-Cal expansion was both a magnet for more illegal immigration and a demand driver for in-home healthcare workers represented by the SEIU. Mr. Huerta says he’s “especially proud” of SEIU’s role in bringing this about.
In stretching the definition of citizenship to include noncitizens, Mr. Huerta has driven a wedge between California and the Constitution, and helped push the state and the federal government into a dangerous showdown. Perhaps that was the real goal all along.
Originally published in the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Swaim is president of the California Policy Center.