Wilhour grills “Southwest Organizing Project,” paid $62M by state taxpayers to promote illegal immigration to Illinois

Affiliates of the Southwest Organizing Project, which has received more than $62 million in taxpayer funding over the past two years, were questioned about the organization’s political activities by State Rep. Blaine Wilhour (R-Beecher City) during an April 21 House Appropriations–Elementary and Secondary Education Committee hearing.

The organization was seeking an additional $20 million for a “parent-mentor program” in Chicago Public Schools, but Wilhour, drawing objections from Committee Chair State Rep. Will Davis (D-Hazel Crest), shifted the discussion to the group’s broader political advocacy efforts, which align with Democrat support for policies benefiting illegal immigrants.

The exchange highlighted a dispute over whether oversight of taxpayer-funded education programs should extend to an organization’s outside advocacy work, with Wilhour calling for expanded scrutiny and Davis insisting discussion remain focused on the parent-mentor program.

“Unlike the chairman, I’ll never apologize for trying to provide an accounting to taxpayer money spent,” Wilhour told the panel requesting the funds, which included affiliates of the Southwest Organizing Project but none of its leaders, during the committee hearing. “The only thing that I’m sorry about is that they sent you guys down here to answer all the questions about this.” 

The parent mentor program itself was described by witnesses as providing classroom-based tutoring and support services, including recruiting and training parent mentors who work alongside teachers.

The Southwest Organizing Project, which serves as a fiscal agent for the parent mentor program, has received more than $62 million in state grants across fiscal years 2025 and 2026. 

State taxpayer grants to the Southwest Organizing Project in 2025 totaled $27.97 million, according to state budget appropriations documents.

In 2026, state taxpayers paid the Southwest Organizing Project $34.22 million.

Meanwhile, the Southwest Organizing Project has created Facebook posts and circulated flyers supporting illegal immigrants. 

In one post it directs residents to a hotline “to report any potential ICE or other federal troops activity in your neighborhood and to get plugged into legal services if a loved one is detained.” 

Materials disseminated by the group also promoted “A Family Preparedness Plan” for illegal immigrants who might be detained. 

The group also warned in another post “Birthright Citizenship Under Attack,” calling a challenge from to birthright citizenship from the White House “a huge threat to everyone’s rights,” urging supporters to “Stay informed. Get prepared.”

“The fact that this organization thinks that it’s okay or appropriate to post this stuff on their social media while they’re taking a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars is troubling,” Wilhour said. “And I know that it’s not your decision, and you’re just here, but we do have a responsibility to be accountable for taxpayer dollars.” 

In November 2025, the Southwest Organizing Project circulated a politicized Facebook post accusing former Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino, who led immigration enforcement under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “Project Midway Blitz,” which resulted in more than 2,500 illegal immigrants deported.

The post declares, “We the people find Greg Bovino guilty,” followed by a list of accusations, including “abducting our neighbors,” “racial profiling & discrimination” and “brutality against all Chicagoans.” 

The Southwest Organizing Project additionally encouraged a protest outside a court appearance by Bovino in early November. 

Wilhour noted the post in his questioning. 

“There’s just some things with this organization that need to be put out there,” Wilhour said. “This is another social media post from November 4th, your organization posted a graphic saying ‘we the people find Greg Bovino guilty.’ Does this bother you that your organization is putting out this stuff and then sending you down to Springfield to answer questions? Because apparently they don’t want to come down here and answer to the actual people that are supposed to be allocating this money to you.” 

Wilhour has criticized funding directed to politicized organizations.  

In mid-2025, Wilhour and other Illinois Freedom Caucus members raised concerns about more than $1 billion in taxpayer-funded grants to such nongovernmental organizations.

“This committee and every committee in the General Assembly that deals with appropriations and oversights in light of this stuff should demand a full 100% accounting of every dollar spent by this organization to ensure that none of the state taxpayer dollars were spent on these ridiculous political activities,” Wilhour said.  

Wilhour also questioned the organization about staffing separation between program funding streams. 

“How do you differentiate between time and funding on different issues?” he said. 

One witness, Adriana Velasquez, co-director of the Parent Engagement Institute, which is in partnership with the Southwest Organizing Project, responded that staff time is tracked by program assignment.   

“We keep track of different staff for whatever they were hired to do. And so the staff that was hired to do community rights work will do community rights work,” Velasquez said. 

State Rep. Blaine Wilhour (R-Beecher City) questions Southwest Organizing Project representatives during an April 21 Illinois House Appropriations hearing, including Adriana Velasquez, co-director of the Parent Engagement Institute, seen in pink. (Screenshot from Blue Room Stream)

A map created by the Parent Engagement Institute in 2023 shows work with the Southwest Organizing Project in Ashburn, Beverly, Chicago Lawn, Gage Park, West Elsdon and West Lawn.

In another part of the hearing, Wilhour questioned whether immigration-related content fell within the scope of education funding. 

“When your organization posted guidance related to renewing DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status, can you explain how immigration-related advocacy fits within the scope of K-12 education funding?” Wilhour said. 

He added that the organization’s use of taxpayer funds raised broader accountability concerns. 

“I’m trying to understand and I think that it’s important that we all understand how an organization that describes itself as a community organizing group is using taxpayer dollars appropriated for K through 12 education,” Wilhour said.  

At multiple points, Davis intervened to narrow the scope of questioning. 

When Wilhour raised concerns about social media posts, Davis attempted to cut off the questioning saying “Representative, I’m not sure if that’s an appropriate question,” and later, “If it’s relative to the parent mentor program, then you’re absolutely correct.” 

Wilhour pushed back. 

“I think it’s wholly appropriate that we’re asking this and it’s appropriate to ask questions relative to the use of the state (funds),” Wilhour said. “With all due respect, I would like for the actual organization here that is asking for money and has received a fair amount of money from the state in the past to answer questions. We’re all about accountability, right?”  

He also argued that oversight questions were directly relevant to how public money is used. 

“We have no evidence that any of this stuff is not relative to anything,” Wilhour said. 

As tensions escalated, Davis reiterated “This is not the committee for it,” and at one point ordered the witnesses representing the Southwest Organizing Project’s appropriations request to step away from the table, saying, “I’m going to ask you all to leave the table.” 

Wilhour objected to the procedural move. 

“I don’t want to be talked to about respect about the majority party when anytime that you don’t get your way around here, you just change the rules,” Wilhour said. 

Barely a $1.5M per year operation ten years ago, the Southwest Organizing Project’s annual revenue neared $26 million in 2024 and was at least $34 million in 2026, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker had state taxpayers give it that much to advocate for illegal aliens.

In 2016, the state taxpayers first gave the Southwest Organizing Project $2 million in state taxpayer funds for its “parent mentoring programs.”

The group has received increasingly more state funding every year since.

Originally founded in 1988 by the Chicago Archdiocese” Office of Peace and Justice” as the “Southwest Catholic Cluster Project,” the group changed its name to the Southwest Organizing Project in 1997.

The group professed to organize black and Mexican Catholics in Archer Heights, West Elsdon, Ashburn, Chicago Lawn, Clearing, Gage Park and West Lawn on the city’s Southwest Side.

In 2001, former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), who represented the Southwest Side neighborhoods where the Southwest Organizing Project was founded, praised the group  at a rally it organized against mortgage lenders. Future President Barack Obama, then a South Side State Senator, joined Madigan at the rally.

In the 2000s, the Southwest Organizing Project aggressively pushed legislation that sought to cap mortgage interest rates, characterizing home loans in the area as “predatory.”

In the 2010s, the Southwest Organizing Project shifted its focus from state mortgage rate caps to promoting illegal immigration.

In 2012, the Southwest Organizing Project was part of the statewide push to allow Illinois illegal aliens to  get driver’s licenses.

Then-Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (D) signed Senate Bill 957 in Jan. 2013, which created a “temporary visitor driver’s license” for illegal aliens.

Southwest Organizing Project activist Ashley Moy-Wooten told the Chicago Tribune at the time that “scores of people” were calling their office to learn how to get the licenses. 

The Tribune described the Southwest Organizing Project as “an immigrant advocacy group.”

In Feb. 2013, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave the Southwest Organizing Project a $750,000 grant to “educate, mobilize, and empower communities to help overcome foreclosures and violence.”

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WITH ITS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FOCUS, THE SOUTHWEST ORGANIZING PROJECT’S REVENUE HAS SOARED

Source: IRS 990 filings