Worker Co-ops Laundering Jobs for Illegal Aliens
Video evidence: Inside the worker-cooperative network that treats work-authorization laws as a staffing problem.
Worker cooperatives are engaging in what amounts to laundering jobs for illegal aliens—in open defiance of federal immigration and work authorization laws. The groups promoting this model have received federal grants, and their explicitly anti-capitalist principles closely track those of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Restoration News has the evidence.
Skirting the Law
Radiate Consulting Cooperative, created by the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), is a pass-through entity between illegal aliens and employers. DAWI admits to helping "undocumented" aliens get jobs and says the coop model is a "legal buffer between workers and clients" that makes "a working relationship possible while protecting workers." DAWI is a tax-exempt non-profit and aligned with far-left extremism.
Not only is DAWI laundering jobs to illegal aliens, but their parent organization, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) supports anti-capitalist principles aligned with the DSA.
Restoration News uncovered a webinar that lays out how these groups ignore laws and provide employment to illegal aliens while attempting to shield the employers who hire them. It's blatant job laundering.
Here's how it works. An illegal alien joins Radiate Consulting, a limited liability company (LLC), as a "worker owner." Then the employer or "client organization" hires Radiate rather than the individual worker. The client pays Radiate, which then compensates the illegal alien as a "contractor."
DAWI considers this a "legal buffer." The Justice Department might not look at it that way.
Vanessa Bransburg, DAWI's co-executive director, explains that the coop Radiate model, also known as the "rapid response development cooperative program," is a tool to help get "young professionals with barriers to work into contractual relationships with their clients." She said the worker cooperative model replicates staffing companies and helps young people without work authorizations get jobs.
Radiate has locations in New York, Illinois, and California, but they're "a fully remote worker cooperative with team members distributed across the United States."
Radiate's New York branch was established in 2019 as a partnership between DAWI and the City University of New York's (CUNY) Mexican Studies Institute, housed at Lehman College. Jose Higuera Lopez, deputy director of the CUNY program, also participated in the DAWI webinar.
Higuera Lopez admitted that many of CUNY students across their 25 campuses were undocumented, so he sought a solution to help provide jobs for them. He said the president and provost of CUNY were on board with the partnership with DAWI. Lehman College receives federal funding, so taxpayer dollars are involved in CUNY's illegal alien employment ring.
In the webinar, Anh Thu Nguyen, DAWI's director of strategic partnerships, presented ways undocumented immigrants can skirt work authorization requirements through the coop model. She pointed out that DAWI is "creating new types of worker cooperatives that specifically center the needs of young undocumented immigrant professionals."
— Victoria Manning (@HoneyBadger_USA) August 26, 2026
Nguyen says CUNY students have trouble finding work after they graduate "because of their lack of work authorization." So, the solution was to create Radiate Consulting which "creates a container so that individuals can get work with different organizations" and their focus is "on nonprofit consulting specifically with immigrant services and immigrant justice organizations," according to Nguyen. She says that "undocumented" immigrants get paid through the worker cooperative and introduces one of them: Jazmin Perez.
Jazmin admits that she is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico without work authorization living in Brooklyn, New York. She works as a consultant under the Radiate Consulting organization. Prior to her job with Radiate, she worked through fellowship programs as an immigration paralegal and facilitated social justice summer programs for young people in Brooklyn.
— Victoria Manning (@HoneyBadger_USA) August 26, 2026
The web of organizations working together reveals an anti-American, communist agendas.
Funded by the U.S. Government and Aligned with the DSA
DAWI's parent organization, USFWC, is part of the "May Day Strong" coalition that wants taxpayer funded housing, childcare, and publicly owned grocery stores. They also want to "tax the rich" so they can have free public transit, free college, and "publicly controlled utilities." The USFWC said they are "proud to stand in solidarity with these demands and the organizations leading this work in our communities." USFWC instructed their supporters to "shut down" and go to rallies and to "speak out in solidarity" on these issues.
The USFWC also supports the "Movement for Black Lives Matter Platform (M4BL)" that is deeply rooted in communism. Some of the things supported by M4BL:
- Abolish prisons
- Defund the police
- Eliminate right-to-work laws
- Decriminalize drugs and prostitution
- Allow anyone to vote, including non-citizens
- Reparations
- Prohibit private education
- Oppose capitalism
These positions all align with the anti-American, communist Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Following the money reveals shocking ties.
DAWI received $3,775,000 in federal grants from 2014-2024. Their funding was cut off in 2025 but that didn't stop them from continuing to get taxpayer money. In September 2025, the Department of Agriculture gave $1 million to the Cooperative Development Foundation, then in June 2026, that same foundation gave a grant to DAWI.
DAWI has received donations from far-left groups such as George Soros' Open Society and Global Communities, Inc, a leftist nonprofit previously funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The alignment with taxpayer funded higher education institutions is alarming. CUNY isn't DAWI's only ally. Here's just a small sample of other colleges and universities promoting them:
William & Mary in Virginia
Amherst College in Massachusetts
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Job laundering is a new business model for illegal aliens: use the coop as a middleman to attempt to shield the aliens and employers from legal implications. DAWI put that model on a webinar and partnered with a taxpayer funded public university to help facilitate their activities. Taxpayers deserve answers and the Justice Department should launch an investigation into these networks. Stay tuned because we've found more. The web is extensive.
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