Governor’s Veto Leaves Central Valley Immigration Legal Services in Limbo

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill last week that would have made permanent a program training immigration attorneys to serve the Central Valley and other underserved regions — even though his own budget included $7.5 million for that same program.

The difference, advocates say, is critical: the budget money doesn’t require any of it to go to rural areas like Fresno. Without the bill, state officials have broad discretion over where those dollars actually land.

SB 1194, by Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, would have locked in the Immigrant Justice Legal Fellowship, which has placed 19 attorneys with 13 organizations across the Central Valley, Central Coast, and Inland Empire since its 2021 launch. Those fellows provided more than 2,400 legal services across 39 counties.

The program was designed as a pilot in 2019, delayed by the pandemic, and has since trained attorneys in removal defense — the work of representing immigrants facing deportation. Fifteen of 18 participants across the first two cohorts became attorneys, and 13 stayed in their service areas. Two became Padilla lawyers in the Fresno County Public Defender’s Office.

“The veto, issued late Sunday evening, underscores the Newsom administration’s failure to acknowledge grassroots-led solutions developed by rural communities,” Jackie Gonzalez, co-executive director of Immigrant Defense Advocates, said in a statement on behalf of the organization.

Jamie Gomez, a Tulare County native who attended San Joaquin College of Law, worked under the fellowship to help free a Fresno man from immigration detention. The man had lived in Fresno for years and has six U.S. citizen children, three with disabilities. He’d been detained during an ICE check-in.

Gomez filed a habeas petition that led to a district court granting a temporary restraining order and the man’s release. The case remains ongoing in immigration court, and the man is back with his family.

“It allowed people like myself to take my time, pass the bar and be given time for that hands-on training,” Gomez said. “I might have been a research clerk, or just somebody who was more or less filling out forms in a regular immigration law office, as opposed to somebody in the fellowship who, from day one, was learning removal defense, was in court, writing motions and all of that.”

Newsom’s veto message pointed to the $7.5 million in this year’s budget, calling the bill “duplicative.”

But Gonzalez said the budget language doesn’t lock any of that money into underserved regions. “Rural and underserved regions do not simply need a one time allocation of more dollars somewhere within California’s immigration-services system,” the statement read. “They need attorneys, experienced organizations, training, mentorship, and an intentional pathway for communities that have historically received too little legal-services investment to build permanent capacity of their own.”

The Central Valley faces a shortage of immigration attorneys, leaving residents vulnerable to improper advice from notarios — people who aren’t authorized to practice law. Geographic distance adds another barrier: some Central Valley residents travel hours to immigration courts in places like Concord.

“People would drive from the Central Valley just to do a free consultation with an immigration attorney,” Gonzalez said. “Both because they didn’t have the dollars to hire a private one, but also because so many of the legal resources they would have access to were like notaries and not actually lawyers. And when you’re in immigration court, you really need the assistance of a lawyer.”

A third cohort is already funded through the budget for January 2027 through the end of 2028, using a two-year model focused solely on removal defense.

The Breakdown

• SB 1194 would have made the Immigrant Justice Legal Fellowship a permanent state program, training attorneys in removal defense for underserved regions including the Central Valley.
• The first two cohorts placed 19 fellows with 13 organizations across 39 counties, providing more than 2,400 legal services. Fifteen of 18 participants became attorneys; 13 stayed in their service areas.
• Gov. Newsom vetoed the bill Sept. 27, saying the $7.5 million already in the state budget for the fellowship makes the bill unnecessary.
• Advocates say the budget language doesn’t require the money to go to rural or underserved regions — giving the state broad discretion over where it’s spent.
• A third cohort is funded through the budget for January 2027 through December 2028.

What This Means for You

The governor you elected to oversee state programs just vetoed a bill that would have guaranteed immigration legal services stay anchored in the Central Valley — a region where immigrants often drive hours for a consultation because local attorneys are scarce. The $7.5 million in the budget he pointed to instead carries no such guarantee. Whether that money actually reaches Fresno, or concentrates in better-resourced regions like the Bay Area, is now a matter of administrative discretion, not law. If you believe underserved communities deserve more than one-time budget line items that can shift with each year’s priorities, this veto is worth remembering when you weigh the governor’s commitment to rural California.

What You Can Do

Contact Gov. Newsom’s office to urge that the $7.5 million in fellowship funding be directed specifically to underserved regions like the Central Valley. His office can be reached at (916) 445-2841 or through the contact form at gov.ca.gov.

What to Watch

The stated reason for this veto — that the budget already funds the fellowship — raises a question the veto message didn’t answer: if the money is already there, why veto the bill that would have locked it into the regions the pilot was designed to serve?

One possibility is straightforward administrative preference — a governor who doesn’t want programs written into permanent law when budget line items give more year-to-year flexibility. But there’s a tension worth naming: flexibility for whom? The Central Valley organizations that built this program, or the state officials who now control where the dollars go?

Sustained investment in one region builds capacity over time — experienced attorneys, trusted organizations, pathways for young lawyers to stay and serve their hometowns. One-time allocations, by design, don’t do that. The Bay Area’s nonprofit immigration legal-services infrastructure didn’t appear by accident; it’s the product of years of directed funding. Whether the Central Valley gets the same, or whether this program drifts toward better-resourced regions when the budget tightens, depends on choices the administration will make outside of public view unless voters demand otherwise.

Is a program this successful — 13 of 18 fellows staying in their service areas, families reunited, due-process rights defended — worth protecting in statute, or only worth funding when convenient? That’s the real question this veto put on the table.