LOS ANGELES, CA – Today, FWD.us released new polling and a new report, “Cutting Health Care, Supercharging ICE,” detailing how federal budget decisions cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care, food assistance and other programs while dramatically increasing spending on immigration enforcement are impacting families and communities across California. 

One year ago, Republicans in Congress passed President Trump’s signature budget legislation, cutting nearly $1 trillion from health care. Between that bill and the spending bills since, they have funneled a quarter trillion dollars to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to terrorize communities. The new FWD.us report shows that California is among the states facing the most significant consequences of these decisions, with an estimated $20.8 billion in federal funding projected to be lost by 2029 as a result of changes to Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, even after offset funds from the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP). 

Among the report’s key findings for California: 

• 203,000 more Californians are projected to become uninsured because of the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. 
• Over 333,000 fewer Californians are receiving SNAP food assistance, one of the biggest drops in the country, while over 1.6 million fewer people are enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP compared with 2025. 
• 44 hospitals and medical facilities have closed or are closing, and California is projected to lose 84,200 health care jobs as a result of changes to the ACA and Medicaid, even after factoring in RHTP funds.
• The Trump Administration has terminated over $28 million in Department of Justice grant funding for community safety and violence intervention in California. 
• At the same time, DHS has spent $1.5 billion to bolster ICE detention capacity in California. The state had 60 ICE detention facilities as of July, holding an average of more than 5,512 people each day, and 50,172 immigrants have been arrested across the state since January 20, 2025. 

Read the California fact sheet here. 

The new polling commissioned by FWD.us shows voters strongly question these spending priorities. In a July national survey of likely voters, 60 percent said spending hundreds of billions of dollars on immigration enforcement while cutting funding for health care is unacceptable, compared with 28 percent who said immigration enforcement should be funded even if it requires cuts elsewhere.

Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) said: “California families are paying the price for Donald Trump and Republicans’ harmful policies that prioritize violent immigration enforcement over making sure families have enough food to survive or can afford basic healthcare. California is the fourth largest economy in the world, not despite, but because of the contributions of immigrants in our labor force that are essential to our state and country’s economy. Trump’s policies that attack the immigrant community not only hurt our country, but do nothing to address the skyrocketing increase in families’ costs.”

 Todd Schulte, President of FWD.us, said: “Californians should not be forced to pay the price for a massive expansion of the federal immigration enforcement system. Hospitals are cutting jobs, families are losing access to health coverage and food assistance, and billions of dollars in federal support are at risk, while the Trump Administration spends more on expanding immigration detention. These choices have real consequences for families and communities across California, and they reflect fundamentally misplaced priorities about where taxpayer dollars can do the most good.”

Felicity Rose, Vice President of Research and Policy at FWD.us and author of the report, said: “California offers one of the clearest examples of the scale of these federal funding decisions. The state is projected to lose $20.8 billion in federal funding, more than 1.6 million fewer people are enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP than a year ago, and more than 84,000 health care jobs are projected to disappear. Meanwhile, DHS has spent $1.5 billion purchasing facilities to bolster immigration detention capacity in the state. And with many of the most significant Medicaid and SNAP cuts still to come, the consequences for California families could grow substantially in the years ahead.”

The California findings are part of a broader national shift in federal spending priorities. The reconciliation bills directed $113 billion to ICE alone, including funding for nearly 100,000 detention beds, roughly 14,600 additional officers and staff, and expanded deportation operations. It also created a $27 billion fund within the Department of Homeland Security without specific line-item allocations or regular reporting requirements.

Read the full report from FWD.us here.