Federal authorities are investigating whether Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., broke immigration and employment laws by hiring a Brazilian national as a live-in nanny while she lacked legal work authorization, and then paying her with campaign funds for years, Fox News Digital reported.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed it referred the matter to DHS law enforcement for a formal investigation.
The referral marks a serious escalation for a sitting congressman who is actively running for governor of California, and who already faces separate, unrelated sexual assault allegations that have thrown his campaign into disarray. The nanny probe now adds potential federal employment and immigration violations to Swalwell's growing list of problems.
The woman at the center of the case is Amanda Barbosa, a Brazilian national who came to the United States on an au pair visa. Swalwell first hired her in 2021, the New York Post reported. Federal Election Commission data shows Barbosa received $3,914 in campaign funds that year.
By 2022, those payments had ballooned. FEC records show Barbosa received $46,930 from Swalwell's campaign that year. In December 2022, as her visa was set to expire, Swalwell began the process of sponsoring Barbosa for a green card, a labor certification application reviewed by the Post showed.
The Department of Labor told the Post the labor certification was approved in 2024. But the gap between the visa expiration and the green card approval is where the trouble lies.
A complaint filed in February with DHS by Joel Gilbert, a California filmmaker and political activist, accused Swalwell of paying his nanny with campaign funds for roughly two years while she allegedly did not have valid work authorization. The complaint cited social media photos showing Barbosa with the Swalwell family throughout 2023 and 2024.
As the complaint put it:
"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."
Then came a second complaint. Filed Tuesday with the Department of Labor, this one alleges that Swalwell and his wife, Brittany Swalwell, lied to keep Barbosa employed. The details of what those alleged lies entailed were not specified in available reporting.
Meanwhile, the money kept flowing. In 2025, Barbosa received another $38,905 in campaign funds from Swalwell, FEC data shows. Separately, FEC records reviewed by Fox News Digital show $52,262 in campaign expenses categorized as "childcare" were reimbursed to Swalwell himself.
The USCIS statement left little room for ambiguity about how the agency views the allegations. The spokesperson told Fox News:
"USCIS has been collecting information on the allegations involving Congressman Eric Swalwell hiring of a Brazilian national as a nanny without lawful work authorization. These allegations are serious... Federal law prohibits employers from knowingly hiring aliens who are not authorized to work in the United States. No employer, including a member of Congress, is above the law. DHS will continue to aggressively enforce statutes to uphold the rule of law and protect American workers."
That language, "no employer, including a member of Congress, is above the law", is not boilerplate. It is a pointed statement directed at a specific officeholder. And it came from the very agency tasked with adjudicating immigration benefits.
Fox News Digital reported it reached out for comment to Swalwell's congressional office, as well as the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security and the Federal Election Commission. Whether Swalwell's office responded before publication was not stated.
The nanny investigation does not exist in a vacuum. Swalwell is simultaneously contending with sexual assault allegations from a former staffer that have rocked his gubernatorial campaign. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported those claims, and CNN later reported that three additional women came forward with misconduct allegations.
Swalwell addressed the sexual assault claims in a video posted Friday, denying them flatly.
"A lot has been said about me today through anonymous allegations, and I thought it was important that you see and hear from me directly. These allegations of sexual assault are flat-out false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen. They have never happened. And I will fight them with everything that I have."
He has not, however, publicly addressed the nanny investigation with the same directness. And unlike the sexual assault claims, which Swalwell has categorically denied, the nanny payments are documented in federal campaign finance records that anyone can review.
The pressure from within his own party has been mounting. Nancy Pelosi has urged Swalwell to abandon his gubernatorial bid, and other Democrats have begun sounding alarms about the political damage.
Consider the timeline and the dollars together. Swalwell hired Barbosa in 2021 on an au pair visa. He paid her $3,914 that year through his campaign. In 2022, the payments jumped to $46,930, and by year's end, he was sponsoring her for a green card because her visa was expiring.
The labor certification was not approved until 2024. That leaves a window, potentially covering much of 2023 and into 2024, during which Barbosa's work authorization status is, at minimum, an open question. Social media photos from that period show her still embedded with the Swalwell family in what the DHS complaint describes as "ongoing childcare responsibilities."
And the campaign kept paying. In 2025, another $38,905 went to Barbosa. On top of that, $52,262 in "childcare" expenses were reimbursed directly to Swalwell through his campaign account.
The total picture is one that federal investigators will now have to sort through: a sitting congressman using campaign dollars to compensate a foreign national whose legal right to work in the United States during the relevant period remains unclear.
Swalwell has built a political career on moral indignation. He has positioned himself as a champion of accountability and institutional integrity. Now he faces a federal investigation into whether he personally violated the very immigration employment laws that exist to protect American workers, the same workers USCIS explicitly invoked in its statement.
The congressman who has never been shy about demanding others answer for their conduct has so far offered no public accounting of the nanny arrangement. His campaign has been busy calling the sexual misconduct allegations "outrageous," but the FEC filings and the USCIS referral deal in harder currency than denials.
Several open questions remain. What was Barbosa's exact legal status during 2023 and 2024? What specific statutes do investigators believe may have been violated? Did the Swalwells know, or should they have known, that their nanny lacked work authorization when they continued paying her? And why were tens of thousands of dollars in "childcare" expenses routed through a congressional campaign account in the first place?
These are not gotcha questions. They are the basic factual inquiries that any federal investigation of this kind would pursue. USCIS has made clear it intends to pursue them.
The broader Democratic caucus in the House has its own troubles to manage, from internal leadership disputes to members making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Swalwell's compounding scandals are not helping the brand.
For a congressman who has spent years lecturing the rest of the country about the rule of law, the rule of law has come knocking on his own front door. It brought receipts.
