Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic frontrunner in the California governor's race, faces fresh accusations that he violated federal immigration and employment law by keeping an illegal immigrant from Brazil on his household payroll, and paying her with donor money during a two-year stretch when she had no valid work authorization, according to a pair of complaints reported by the New York Post.
The allegations land at the worst possible moment for Swalwell, whose gubernatorial campaign was already unraveling Friday after four women came forward with sexual-assault and misconduct claims he denies. Together, the nanny complaints and the misconduct accusations have turned what was supposed to be a triumphant statewide bid into a rolling catalog of liability, with a June 2 open primary fast approaching.
A complaint filed Tuesday with the Department of Labor claims that Eric and Brittany Swalwell lied to federal authorities to keep 33-year-old Amanda Barbosa, their live-in Brazilian nanny, working for them after her temporary work authorization was about to expire in 2022. A separate complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security in February, dated Feb. 16, accuses Swalwell of paying Barbosa under the table with campaign funds for roughly two years while she lacked legal permission to work.
Federal Election Commission records paint a clear financial picture. The Post reported that Barbosa received $3,914 in campaign funds in 2021, the year Swalwell first hired her to look after his three children. In 2022, that figure ballooned to $46,930. An additional $52,262 in campaign expenses labeled "childcare" were written off to Swalwell himself.
Then the on-the-books payments stopped, right around the time Barbosa's au pair visa expired in December 2022. They did not resume until 2025, when she received $38,905 in campaign funds. The gap matters. Breitbart reported that social-media photos from 2023 and 2024 were cited in the complaints as evidence Barbosa continued performing childcare duties during the very period she allegedly lacked lawful work authorization.
The DHS complaint spells it out:
"Barbosa appears in numerous social media photos with the Swalwell family throughout 2023 and 2024, indicating continued close association and ongoing childcare responsibilities despite the absence of known lawful work authorization."
Those photos, pulled from Barbosa's since-deleted Facebook account, reportedly showed her caring for the Swalwell children at family events, including the annual White House picnic in both 2023 and 2024. In one, she held the youngest child. Another, from Halloween 2024, showed Barbosa taking the kids trick-or-treating while wearing a Brazil soccer shirt.
With Barbosa's au pair visa winding down in December 2022, Swalwell began the process of sponsoring her for a green card, the Post reported, citing a permanent labor certification application the outlet reviewed. The Department of Labor told the Post that the certification was approved in 2024.
But approval of a labor certification does not retroactively authorize employment during the years the application was pending. The complaint's core charge is that Barbosa kept working, and kept getting paid, off the books, throughout 2023 and 2024 while her immigration status left her without valid work authorization. Her LinkedIn page, according to a screenshot included in the complaints, said she worked as a private childcare provider continuously from 2021 to the present.
Swalwell's entanglement with questions about his own transparency is nothing new. He previously threatened legal action over the release of files related to his ties with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, even as he had spent years demanding full disclosure from political opponents.
Barbosa arrived in the United States from Rio de Janeiro in January 2021 on an au pair visa. Swalwell hired her that fall. The article describes her enrolling at a community college while the green-card process played out, a detail that raises its own questions about whether off-campus employment was permissible under student visa rules.
The nanny payments sit inside a much larger cloud over Swalwell's campaign spending. Joel Gilbert, the California filmmaker and activist who filed the complaints, told the Post that Swalwell is already under FEC investigation for spending more than $200,000 in campaign funds on personal babysitting.
Gilbert did not mince words:
"It's a brazen disregard for the law. He's harboring and employing an illegal."
The FEC issued a 2022 opinion giving Swalwell the green light to use campaign contributions for overnight childcare, but only if the expenses resulted from travel for campaign events. Whether the payments to Barbosa fell within those narrow bounds is exactly what investigators are now examining. There have been no findings of wrongdoing to date.
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that FEC disclosures showed Swalwell paid about $17,000 to babysitters from Nov. 14, 2022, through the end of that year, including after Election Day. Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, said at the time that using campaign funds for child care after the election "would be a violation if... they were not directly caused by campaign activity."
The broader pattern of donor-funded personal spending, previously scrutinized over luxury hotels and family payments, only sharpens the question of whether Swalwell treated his campaign treasury as a household checkbook. Eric and Brittany Swalwell had more than $400,000 in combined income, the Post noted, raising the obvious question of why campaign donors were footing the nanny bill at all.
Swalwell called the allegations "absolutely false" and vowed to "fight them with everything I have." His campaign did not respond to the Post's request for comment. Barbosa could not be reached.
Fox News reported that the nanny complaints surfaced as Swalwell was already facing the separate sexual assault and misconduct allegations tied to his gubernatorial campaign. In a video posted Friday, Swalwell addressed those claims directly, calling them "flat-out false." A former staffer alleged a 2024 attack that left her "bruised and bleeding," the Post reported.
The twin crises have battered Swalwell's standing. Online betting odds have shifted toward billionaire progressive Tom Steyer in the California governor's race. Swalwell's own legal entanglements continue to multiply, he recently quietly dropped a lawsuit against FHFA Director Pulte over a mortgage fraud referral, raising further questions about his judgment in picking fights he cannot finish.
Several questions hang over the case. What specific immigration and employment statutes does the government believe were violated? Did Barbosa hold any form of interim work authorization during 2023 and 2024, or was she working entirely without legal permission? And did the Swalwells make false statements on the labor certification application, as the Department of Labor complaint alleges?
The complaints have been filed, but no agency has yet announced an investigation or enforcement action based on them. The FEC inquiry into the broader babysitting spending predates these filings. Whether federal investigators treat the nanny payments as a standalone immigration matter, a campaign-finance violation, or both will shape the legal exposure Swalwell faces heading into the primary.
Meanwhile, a separate court filing has challenged Swalwell's eligibility for the governor's race entirely, another front in a campaign that now seems to be collapsing from every direction at once.
For a congressman who built a national profile lecturing others about accountability and the rule of law, the emerging picture is one of a politician who expected the rules to apply to everyone but himself. Voters in California will get their say on June 2.
