The Perfect California Scam

Well, not PERFECT. How about “perfectly symbolic.” After all, the amount of money being wasted doesn’t begin with a “B,” but rather an “M.”

Still, you have to admit that this scam is the sort of thing that Californians will love, and the only problem with it was that the “clients” being served—illegal aliens—are more skeptical of government than the liberals trying to throw money at them. 

A contractor drove hundreds of miles a day trying to get illegal aliens to sign up and had to convince them that it wasn’t a scam.

Incredible stuff. pic.twitter.com/B9nL7JbG5o

— City Journal (@CityJournal) May 26, 2026

City Journal has the story. (If you don’t follow City Journal or Christopher Rufo, start now.)

This program has EVERYTHING. Illegal aliens. NGOs. Government slush funds. Climate change. About the only thing it is missing is propaganda for Hamas, and no doubt some activist somewhere is promoting that too. 

California is spending millions of dollars on a program that provides free solar panels, refrigerators, and windows to “low-income” farmworkers, including illegal immigrants.

The initiative, called the Farmworker Housing Component of the Low-Income Weatherization Program, is part of California’s sprawling, multibillion-dollar “cap-and-trade” system, which taxes carbon producers and redistributes approximately $3 billion per year to energy programs and left-wing social causes—all under the banner of fighting “climate change.”

“Farmworker Housing Component of the Low-Income Weatherization Program.” It’s the sort of thing that warms the cockles of one’s heart. 

Didn’t Stacey Abrams get $2 billion or so from the Biden administration to do the same sort of thing? Of course she did. Because, really, why not? It helps the climate! And social justice! And Stacey Abrams!

Since 2019, California’s government has earmarked $49 million for the farmworker program, which operates through an opaque web that includes a government agency, nonprofit providers, and private contractors. California’s Department of Community Services and Development selected La Cooperativa Campesina de California, a nonprofit that serves farmworkers, to administer the program. La Cooperativa, in turn, has partnered with a for-profit, “minority owned” company, MAROMA Energy Services, to help run the program. Contractors do the work of installing solar panels and other appliances.

These organizations have heavily advertised the program to California’s nearly 900,000 agricultural workers, half to three-quarters of whom are illegal immigrants. In its official documentation, California’s Department of Community Services and Development acknowledges that non-citizens are eligible for the program and that they even accept identification from foreign governments.

In a Spanish-language radio broadcast, Natalie Velores, a program manager for MAROMA, confirmed that participants do not need “legal status” in the United States and can use a matrìcula consular, a common form of identification that the Mexican consulate provides to migrants who have crossed the border, to apply.

“We only require an ID,” Velores said. “It doesn’t need to be from this state, or [the] United States.”

Beneficiaries work hard to loop laborers into the system. A contractor for John Harrison Contracting—a California-based “Minority Business Enterprise” and Farmworker Housing Component subcontractor—would drive “hundreds of miles a day” across Southern California, trying to persuade farmworkers to sign up for the program, Inside Climate News previously reported. One challenge was to convince workers that the program was not a scam. The other challenge, after the Trump administration increased ICE raids, was finding potential clients, many of whom “stopped showing up to job sites.”

Really, if you think about it, this program only spent about $23,000 per family. Compared to San Francisco spending almost half a million dollars per alcoholic giving away a few shots of free vodka, this is chicken feed. 

San Fransisco gave FREE BOOZE to homeless alcoholics and it cost $80 MILLION.

They thought withdrawal would be too tough so taxpayers kept alcoholics drunk.

Rehab would have been cheaper.

Gavin Newsom can never be president.
pic.twitter.com/pjRcTNzCOl

— Mila Joy (@Milajoy) May 25, 2026

I’m not sure why, exactly, a program was necessary specifically for farmworkers—I assume many of them have other concerns more pressing than the need for solar panels—but I assume it had to do with some political deal being cut in Sacramento, and the political attractiveness of throwing money at illegal aliens, which seems to be especially popular with California Democrats. 

Despite a $49 million budget and nearly seven years of operation, the farmworker “weatherization” program has only provided services to about 2,000 families. That means the State of California has allocated roughly $23,000 per household for its program to provide free solar panels, refrigerators, and other services—a number that raises serious concerns about financial accountability.

One problem: the same man, Mauricio Blanco, seems to be connected to entities at multiple stages in the flow of funds. Blanco worked as a project manager for La Cooperativa Campesina de California, which has been awarded at least $10.7 million by the state; is currently listed as an executive of MAROMA Energy Services, which has been granted nearly $34 million from La Cooperativa for “weatherization” services since 2017; and is CEO of John Harrison Contracting, a firm that appears to have done much of the solar installation work. He acknowledged but did not address our request for comment.

The funny thing is, none of this is fraud. It is corruption, but all perfectly legal as far as I can tell, unless there are outright kickbacks or something. 

SCOOP: We followed the money of California’s $49M “farmworker weatherization” program, which provides free solar panels to illegal aliens, and discovered that one man is connected to every step in the contracting process, from the grantmakers to his private construction firm. pic.twitter.com/49oGF2S6tL

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) May 26, 2026

So on top of the waste that programs like this represent, you’ve got fraud on top of it all. 

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left’s lies, new legislation wasn’t needed to secure our border, just a new president.

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