A California program for unaccompanied immigrant children will receive $15 million in state funding after local Assemblymember Gregg Hart pushed for Gov. Gavin Newsom to add it to next year’s budget.
“We are talking about children, children who are frightened, children who have survived more than adults ever should,” said executive director Julissa Peña of the Santa Barbara Immigrant Legal Defense Center, a non-profit that has benefited from the funding since last fall.
The program is funded primarily by the state and through private donations, but the state had initially left the program out of its final budget for next year.
Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project, a state program housed under the Department of Social Services, supports a network of organizations like the Santa Barbara Immigrant Legal DefenseCenter to provide unaccompanied immigrant children access to legal representation as well as case management through food, housing and mental health services.
Peña said the new funding would help the organization represent its nearly 100 unaccompanied immigrant children this year throughout all three counties of the Central Coast.
An unaccompanied child is someone under 18 years old who migrates to the United States without legal status nor a parent to claim custody of them.
“Every week, we meet children who arrive at our office terrified,” Peña said. “They are afraid to go to court, afraid to attend their ICE check-ins, afraid that showing up to comply with the law could mean being taken into custody and separated from the people who have become their family.
Peña spoke alongside Ventura County Supervisor Vianey Lopez of the Fifth District, who also shared stories about her experience around immigration within the region.
“This funding also comes at a meaningful time in our communities as we approach tomorrow, one year since the violent immigration enforcement actions our communities witnessed here in Carpinteria and in my district in Ventura County,” Lopez said, referring to the immigration raids at the Glass House Farms last summer.
Outside of Carpinteria City Hall on Thursday, Peña, Lopez and Hart also stood with local representatives of the county like Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors Roy Lee of the First District and Laura Capps of the Second District, who showed their support of immigrant children with signs at the meeting.
“These are incredibly deserving and needy children who need our help,” Hart said.
Hart held the meeting to announce the newly added money after he had sent a letter to the governor’s office in March urging the state to include funding for the Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project in the state’s final budget for 2026-2027.
The Santa Barbara Immigrant Legal Defense Center joined the state program in October 2025 with a minimum requirement of representing 90 children to receive funding.
“We have represented children as young as three years old,” Peña said. “How do we expect a three-year-old to understand immigration law?”
Hart said the one-time funding will be available until June 2029 for community-based organizations in the state that support unaccompanied immigrant children.
“Justice only has meaning if it is accessible,” Peña said.
