When California Gov. Gavin Newsom makes his inevitable presidential campaign official, he’s going to have to answer for the state’s failures under his watch.
The wildfires that devastated Los Angeles, the billions of dollars blown on a high-speed rail project that’s going nowhere, the state’s abysmal economy that’s bleeding jobs and population to better-governed regions of the country where Republicans are in charge.
But California’s response to the illegal immigration crisis unleashed by the Biden administration should be near the top of the list — and that includes funding a group that specifically caters to HIV-infected foreigners who’ve crossed into the country and are seeking “immigration relief and benefits.”
According to an April report in City Journal, a publication of the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, Newsom’s California responded to the Biden migrant invasion by using taxpayer dollars to distribute “approximately $1 billion to an army of nonprofits that has encouraged unchecked numbers of migrants to enter the country, fought deportation orders in the courts, and led street protests against ICE.”
So far, so normal for Democratic politicians. Americans are practically inured to leftists courting undocumented hordes from the third world, using the American legal system to attack the laws of the land, and rioting in the streets when they don’t get their way. (As British author Douglas Murray puts it: “Import the third world’s people, import the third world’s problems.”)
But City Journal report authors Christopher Rufo and Susan Crabtree uncovered another oddity of the Newsom administration: Funding a group that specializes in handling “asylum” cases for individuals infected with HIV — the virus that causes AIDS.
Oasis Legal Services — based in Berkeley (naturally) — “denies that it encourages the entry of immigrants,” Rufo and Crabtree wrote.
And that might be true — technically. But there’s no question that just the existence of such a service functions as an encouragement to illegal immigration of those carrying a fatal disease whose contagious properties California in particular knows all too well.
(California and New York were at the forefront of the AIDS crisis from its beginning in the 1980s.)
And there’s no question that Oasis isn’t shy about trumpeting its services. Its annual report last year boasted that one in five of its clients is “living with HIV,” according to the City Journal report.
In other words, just by distributing money to the group, the Newsom administration was effectively importing those living with HIV.
And it’s helping them stay.
“The odds of winning an asylum case go up to 99% for clients when they are represented by an Oasis team member,” the group bragged in its “2024 Impact Report.”
SCOOP: Gavin Newsom funded a left-wing NGO that specializes in bringing in undocumented migrants “living with HIV.”
The group’s executive director claims that his “queer,” “trans,” and “nonbinary” clients—one in five of whom is infected—almost all gain asylum in the US. pic.twitter.com/ltNO17PV9m
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) April 22, 2026
The group’s executive director, Adam Ryan Chang, told Rufo and Crabtree that “people living with HIV are not barred from entering the United States on that basis.”
Reasonable people might argue that should be grounds for barring entry to the country, just like any other infectious disease could be, but that’s another issue.
The point here is that Newsom’s administration, according to City Journal, gave state funding — money it collects from taxpayers of the Golden State — to help pay the bills for a group dedicated to helping carriers of an infectious disease remain in the country after entering illegally.
In the process, of course, those carriers could infect others, spreading misery, expense, and death into the country, all on the taxpayer’s dime.
Oasis was just one of the groups the City Journal report highlighted that were beneficiaries of Newsom’s largesse with other people’s money.
There were the standard charities — Catholic Relief Services and Jewish Family Services were the largest — but others were not standard at all.
“Many nonprofits benefiting from these funds are shockingly radical,” Rufo and Crabtree wrote. “Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit that has been awarded more than $2 million from California since Newsom took office, helps migrants enter the United States — hence the group’s name, ‘to the other side.’ On social media, Al Otro Lado touts its efforts to provide ‘freedom of movement’ to migrants.”
Newsom responded to Biden’s illegal immigration invasion by showering public money on groups that were essentially abetting the invaders — including those infected with a virus that causes a potentially deadly, infectious disease.
Americans responded to Biden’s illegal immigration invasion by re-electing Donald Trump to the White House.
Whenever Newsom makes his inevitable presidential campaign official, Democrats better keep those two facts in mind.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
