California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference in Washington, D.C., on May 19, 2026.
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At the end of 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom framed it as a matter of principle when under his administration, California became the first state in the nation to pay for undocumented immigrants to use Medicaid.
“In California, we believe everyone deserves access to quality, affordable health care coverage – regardless of income or immigration status,” Newsom said in a statement to ABC News at the time.
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People flocked to the system, with about 1.5 million undocumented Californians using the state’s Medi-Cal healthcare by November 2025. But now Newsom and fellow Democrats in Sacramento are walking back on their promise to provide healthcare access to all.
Lawmakers have slashed the program in a series of cuts over the last year with more expected to come. In January, the state froze any new undocumented adults from applying for the program. Dental benefits for undocumented people are set to expire in July. And Newsom’s latest budget proposal, released in May, calls for increasing premiums from a planned $30 to $50 for undocumented people starting in July next year.
Charging immigrants on Medi-Cal will “absolutely” push people off healthcare, according to Rachel Linn Gish, the interim deputy director of Health Access California. She said the governor’s cuts have returned California to a “two-tiered health care system” where undocumented immigrants will lose access to care.
“Governor Newsom [led] the way to provide access to all Californians regardless of immigration status. It was a key point of his governorship up until last year,” Linn Gish said in an email. “We have since then been disappointed in the rollbacks to the program he once championed.”
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The cuts are being driven by multiple factors. The program is far more expensive for California taxpayers than it was originally expected to be, and at the same time Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump have cut $1 trillion in federal healthcare spending over 10 years. That’s left Newsom’s administration scrambling to find ways to balance the budget, with undocumented immigrants shouldering some of the pain.
A banner saying clients at Families Together of Orange County in Tustin, Calif., could receive help renewing Medi-Cal coverage., Feb. 1, 2023.
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H.D. Palmer, the deputy director of external affairs for Newsom’s Department of Finance, disputed that the administration’s moves constitute “backtracking” on the commitment to provide healthcare to undocumented people because current enrollees can stay on the system. Palmer said the cuts were directly related to Trump’s H.R. 1 bill. The law, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, cut roughly $4 trillion in taxes over 10 years while also cutting healthcare spending.
“In light of the substantial fiscal pressures that Washington has put on California and other states because of the provisions of HR 1, these measures reflect a way to address these new federally imposed costs while continuing to provide health care benefits to those who now receive them,” Palmer said in an email.
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Linn Gish said that even undocumented people currently on the program are at risk of losing coverage permanently. Undocumented people have a 90-day grace period to reenroll after missing a premium, but if they miss that window they would permanently be blocked from full coverage, according to the Department of Health Care Services.
In that way, California’s healthcare cuts could in effect become part of Trump’s campaign to make life more uncomfortable for undocumented people in order to encourage “self-deportation.”
Nadereh Pourat, a healthcare policy researcher at UCLA, said undocumented people without healthcare can still use some county medical facilities. But that could overload the facilities and extend wait times for entire communities.
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She said the cuts are almost certainly because of Trump’s H.R. 1 bill.
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“The important issue here is that these changes are because of the HR1 implementation. If it was not for this law, I don’t [think] California would be trying to cut some people off,” Pourat said.
Newsom’s cuts to health benefits for undocumented people could save the state $5 billion over the next three years, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.