Gavin Newsom’s Illegal Labor Problem

It’s 5 a.m. in Napa Valley and the field workers have been picking grapes for an hour. Floodlights illuminate the pitch darkness, bringing to life the vines running up and down the sloping hillside. Off in the distance, a tractor rumbles, pulling a small trailer filled with plastic buckets that will soon be filled with grapes. Spanish chatter fills the air as the workers’ hands move in quick, practiced motions. They work at night to escape the heat. It’s cold enough now that their breath is visible, hanging like smoke before dissipating in the predawn darkness.

During harvest season in the Napa Valley, similar scenes play out at vineyard after vineyard, night after night. Entire fields picked clean, one vine at a time, bringing $11 billion to the local economy every year. The grapes picked at this particular field, on this particular morning, are sweet to the taste, and will soon be crushed to make Cabernet Sauvignon, the full-bodied red wine for which the region is known.

Light is seeping into the sky, casting long shadows in the dirt. The driver of the tractor reviews the crew’s work, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. These workers say their boss, a veteran of the Napa wine industry who operates a small vineyard management company, treats them well. That’s not the case for all field hands in the county.

Nearby, in Pope Valley, sits the Oso Vineyard, a sprawling, 129-acre site featuring Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Petite Sirah, and Petit Verdot grapes. In 2022, the PlumpJack Collection of Wineries—part of the wine and hospitality business founded by California Governor Gavin Newsom—purchased Oso for $14.5 million.

Newsom did not divest his financial stake in PlumpJack when he was elected governor. Between 2019 and 2024, tax returns for him and his wife show at least $11 million in income, most of it coming from wineries, restaurants, and other investments.

This City Journal investigation is based on court documents, federal labor reports, state and federal oversight records, and interviews with numerous sources in the Napa Valley wine industry. In Napa, where 71 percent of agricultural workers are immigrants, it’s an open secret that the wine industry relies heavily on illegal labor. And Newsom’s wine business, which owns more than 400 acres of vineyards in the county, appears to be no exception.

For years, Newsom’s business has contracted the services of a vineyard management company with a long history of employing illegal labor. And as governor, Newsom has leveraged tax dollars to facilitate the presence of illegal immigrants in California, which, in turn, helps prop up the struggling Napa wine industry from which he profits.

In the early 1960s, as the Napa wine boom was taking off, Salvador Renteria arrived in the valley on a Greyhound bus. An illegal immigrant from the Mexican state of Jalisco, Renteria began working as a vineyard laborer in 1964, before a series of promotions led him to the ranks of management. In 1987, he struck out on his own and founded Renteria Vineyard Management, now one of the largest vineyard management companies in Napa Valley.

In 1995, Salvador’s son, Oscar, took over the family business. Oscar had begun working the fields at age 11. Now, under his stewardship, RVM manages more than “2,200 acres and employ[s] 80 full-time and up to 400 seasonal workers.” The Napa Valley Grapegrowers recently named Oscar Renteria its Grower of the Year.

Newsom’s history in Napa dates to 1995, with the founding of PlumpJack Estate Winery in Oakville. In 2005, his company acquired a 54-acre property, now called CADE Estate Winery, on Howell Mountain. In 2012, it purchased the Odette Estate Winery in the Stags Leap District. In 2016, PlumpJack bought Ladera Vineyards, now called 13th Vineyard. Finally, in 2022, it bought Oso, bringing PlumpJack’s Napa Valley holdings to over 400 acres.

Located in the northeast corner of Napa Valley, Oso takes its name from the Spanish word for “bear.” The vineyard sits in the hills between Sugarloaf and Howell Mountain, and its vines grow on stone-lined terraces above Shwartz Creek. At more than 1,200 feet above sea level, the vines grow in rocky soils, creating a distinct flavor profile.

PlumpJack contracts RVM to manage its field operations at the property. A PlumpJack website identifies Oscar Renteria as Oso’s “long-time vineyard manager.” RVM’s website lists CADE Estate Winery as one of its active clients, which has sourced a significant percentage of its grapes from the Oso property. We contacted PlumpJack and RVM, neither of whom disputed the existence of such a contract.

During multiple reporting trips to Napa, we spoke with industry sources. They told us that the region’s field workers are primarily composed of two categories: those who live in the region (many of whom are illegal immigrants), and those brought to the country under the federal H-2A visa program. The H-2A program allows employers to recruit “nonimmigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.”

We downloaded a trove of Department of Labor data. Given the files’ size—one of the spreadsheets had more than 400,000 entries—we fed them into two different large language models. We asked the systems to search for H-2A applications associated with RVM and Newsom’s wineries, either directly or through third-party contractors.

At first, Newsom’s Oso vineyard seems to have had a paper trail. PlumpJack bought the Oso Vineyard from Michael Mondavi Family Estate in August 2022. Three H-2A cases appear to have listed Oso as a worksite in 2022, and two more did so in 2023. A company named “Mendoza Bros. Harvesting” appears to have filed both 2023 applications under a worksite named “New Piña Vineyard Management.” How this relates to Renteria’s status as the site’s “long-time” manager is unclear.

Later, however, the trail seems to disappear. After 2023, the systems found no further H-2A worksite listings for Oso. We found no application naming RVM or PlumpJack as the employer and no worksite listings matching the names or known addresses of PlumpJack’s other Napa estates.

Since RVM does not appear to source its large seasonal workforce from the H-2A program, it likely hires workers living in the region. Research papers from the Migration Policy Institute, a left-wing think tank, estimate that between one-quarter and one-third of Napa’s overall immigrant population is “unauthorized,” including 27 percent of the workers in the agricultural sector. But according to multiple industry sources in Napa, the real percentage of illegals working in the vineyards is considerably higher.

“I think it’s 80 percent,” said the owner of a vineyard management company, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity. “If you’re legal, you have your Green Card, you have your driver’s license and all these things, you don’t want to be working in the vineyards.”

In numerous public statements over many years, Oscar Renteria has all but admitted to employing illegal immigrants. Renteria was interviewed for a 2013 article on the difficulties associated with implementing the Affordable Care Act in the agricultural sector. The article notes that a portion of Renteria’s workforce “may be in the country illegally.”

“They’re really nervous,” Renteria said. “Nervous they’ll be tracked and then somehow the possibility of being identified, and the fear of being deported or not being allowed to work. It comes up all the time in conversations when we outline the choices.”

In 2017, during an interview with the American Immigration Council (AIC), Renteria said, “Many of our farm workers have what I call a complicated immigration status.”

He added that Napa’s wine growers were prepared to “go to battle” in support of workers with what the AIC paraphrased as “complicated immigration status,” an apparent euphemism for illegal immigrants.

In 2018, during the first Trump administration, ICE launched a series of sweeps at convenience stores. The New York Times, reporting on the raids, noted that Renteria’s supervisors had asked him what to do if ICE showed up at their job sites. One supervisor reportedly warned workers to stay away from convenience stores in the area. “It’s causing a lot of panic,” Renteria said. “They’re very nervous.”

We also spoke with a former long-time employee of RVM. This person has lived and worked in the U.S. illegally for more than a decade, and claims RVM was aware of his status while he was employed at the company. This source said the vast majority of the field hands at RVM were in the country illegally, including at least some workers on every crew and every job site.

“About 80 percent of all of us who worked there [were in the country illegally],” the source said. “The other 20 percent had regular status . . . . We’re talking about the majority across all the work crews being in the same situation.” When asked explicitly if RVM was aware that many employees were illegals, the source said, “Absolutely, of course. There was a lot of them.”

The source also claimed that while he worked at RVM, a manager had a contact in Mexico from whom he would source workers. “It was a foreman, and he did communicate with people over by the border to bring people from there, from an Ejido near Tijuana,” the source said. The source believes that RVM used the illegal status of workers to take advantage of them, claiming many workers were not paid overtime, and that safety and health regulations were often ignored, including in at least one instance of serious injury.

These allegations fit within a broader pattern of enforcement findings and litigation against RVM. In 2017, a California Occupational Safety and Health inspection was triggered at an RVM work site following an accident. In total, official records note that 320 employees were “exposed,” resulting in a fine for noncompliance with state requirements on heat illness prevention. When we sought to obtain a copy of the file from the California government via a public records request, we were informed that it had been destroyed.

In 2022, the Department of Labor found wage-and-hour violations at RVM involving 45 employees, which resulted in the company being ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in back wages and civil penalties. A database of corporate violations notes that the penalties were levied under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.

RVM has also faced lawsuits whose allegations echo the violations identified by the DOL.

In September 2024, Hernan Antonio Gallegos Arteaga filed a lawsuit against RVM. The class-action suit alleged failure to pay minimum and overtime wages, among other labor code violations.

Nearly two years later, in April 2026, Willer Mendez Soriano filed a lawsuit against RVM, alleging various violations of California wage-and-hour laws. Soriano also filed his suit on behalf of similarly situated workers. In September, Soriano announced a settlement agreement with RVM.

At a property not far from Oso, we interviewed the owner of a vineyard who did not want to be named. He said most vineyard owners in Napa don’t care if workers are illegal, adding that one benefit of hiring a management company is that it creates distance between the owner and the workers who pick the grapes. “The politics are dirty,” he said. “We don’t worry about that stuff . . . . When you need it, you need it.”

On our second day reporting in Napa Valley, we went to Newsom’s PlumpJack Estate Winery for a tasting, events that retail for up to $125 per person. The winery occupies a 42-acre estate, which sits at the foot of the Vaca Mountains. There we were offered the opportunity to purchase the 2022 Odette Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, which sells for $400 per bottle.

Later that day, we went to Newsom’s CADE Estate Winery, a 54-acre mountainside estate sitting 1,800 feet above sea level. We tasted wine overlooking the Napa Valley down toward the Mayacamas Mountains, before being taken into the wine caves, which extend 15,000 square feet into the hillside and descend more than 100 feet underground. One thousand French oak barrels sit in a temperature-controlled cave.

Napa County is now home to three taxpayer-funded farmworker housing complexes—in Napa, in St. Helena, and in Calistoga. There, farmworkers receive subsidized living quarters, on-site health care, English classes, and legal services. The complexes, operated as public-private partnerships, average an occupancy rate of 96 percent, according to county statistics. The state began funding the facilities to the tune of $250,000 annually during Newsom’s first full year in office. In September 2026, Newsom signed A.B. 1890, increasing the state’s annual contribution to up to $500,000.

We confirmed that illegal immigrants are welcome at the housing complexes. At the complex in Calistoga, we spoke to a man who told us a fellow resident had gone to watch the World Cup in Los Angeles, where he was captured by ICE and deported. When we returned the next day to interview more residents, the manager told us to leave, saying the men were worried we were “La Migra,” a Spanish term for immigration authorities. At another facility, the manager confirmed illegals were allowed to reside there, saying many residents were afraid of immigration authorities.

The use of public funds to house illegal immigrants, who then work in Napa’s wine industry, allows vineyard owners partially to offset costs onto taxpayers. It also represents just one way—among many—that government policy has been leveraged during the Newsom administration to facilitate illegal labor in California.

As governor, Newsom and his wife have earned millions from his business ventures and investment holdings, with his wineries accounting for much of that income. The couple has “earned at least $11 million since he took office,” according to a 2026 report from the Los Angeles Times.

Under Newsom, California runs America’s largest welfare system, spending more than $180 billion annually on food, health care, and other social programs. To pay for it all, California imposes the nation’s highest tax rates.

As recently reported by City Journal, California now oversees a “shadow welfare system” that provides illegal immigrants with health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, and more. At least one program, California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, specifically bars American citizens from participation. California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the past fiscal year. Newsom has even bragged about his “controversial” decision to extend Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants. Meantime, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, encourages people to sign up for the California Earned Income Tax Credit, a program that assures applicants that “no Social Security number” is “no problem.”

Under Newsom, the California Department of Food and Agriculture awarded more than $6 million to the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, a nonprofit that runs the California Farmer Relief Fund, which prioritizes “BIPOC, immigrant, and undocumented farmers.” The Newsom administration has also heavily funded immigration legal services and removal-defense organizations, and sued the Trump administration over federal immigration policy.

One donor to Newsom’s original run for governor was Oscar Renteria. He also contributed to the political arm of the California Farm Labor Contractor Association, which has a history of advocacy related to immigration policy.

The CFLCA was part of a coalition that opposed A.B. 1136 and urged Newsom to veto it. The coalition warned that complying with the bill could give employers “constructive knowledge” that some of their employees lacked work authorization, exposing them to liability if they kept those workers on the payroll. The implication was plain: the bill would make it harder for employers to claim ignorance when caught employing illegals. The following month, Newsom vetoed the bill.

When Newsom took office, he kept his financial stake in PlumpJack through a so-called “blind trust.” Since at least 2023, his wine business has contracted a vineyard management company with a long history of employing illegal immigrants. At the same time, Newsom has pursued policies that aggressively expand benefits and protections for illegals, whose labor helps sustain the industry from which he profits.

We sent multiple requests for comment on this story. Izzy Gardon, a Newsom spokesman, told us that the governor “placed his business interests in a blind trust when he took office in 2019” and “has no involvement in PlumpJack’s operations or management.” A PlumpJack spokesperson said the company expects “all vendors working with [it] to comply with the law.” Renteria Vineyard Management did not respond to our request.

On one of our final days reporting in Napa, we asked one of our contacts to telephone Renteria Vineyard Management. Speaking in Spanish, he presented himself as a Mexican national who recently arrived in California and was looking for work. The RVM employee who answered the phone explained that while Napa’s harvest season would soon be over, RVM would have a few ongoing jobs. She asked our contact if he had experience picking grapes or operating a tractor.

Our contact said that he had a bit of experience doing both. He then asked what paperwork he would need in order to secure employment with RVM. The woman said a Green Card. When our contact explained that he didn’t have that or a Social Security Number, the woman asked for his phone number and said a manager would follow up in the near future.

After the call ended, we phoned another source: an illegal immigrant who has been in California for more than two decades. This source informed us that a Green Card is the easiest paperwork for illegal immigrants to fake, as many vendors in the state can supply fake documents for a fee. “That’s easy,” the source said, adding that the only thing that makes it difficult for illegal immigrants to work in California is if a company is enrolled in E-Verify.

E-Verify is the federal system—run by the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the Social Security Administration—that allows employers to check whether new hires are legally authorized to work in the U.S. RVM does not appear in the government’s searchable database of E-Verify participants.

We told our source about the call with RVM—that when our caller said that he didn’t have a Green Card or an SSN, the company representative had asked for his number and said a manager would be in touch about a potential job. “That means they’re going to hire him,” the source said.