Xavier Becerras record overseeing migrant children as U.
S. health secretary has erupted into the central fault line of Californias governors race, raising grave questions about competence, accountability, and the human cost of Biden-era border policy.
The controversy intensified after Republican candidate Steve Hilton unveiled fresh whistleblower claims alleging child labor and sex trafficking involving children as young as six, thrusting Becerras tenure at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) back into the spotlight, according to The New York Post.
A former senior adviser at HHS now contends that at least 130,000 migrant children remain unaccounted for, a figure that dwarfs earlier public estimates and underscores the scale of the alleged failure.
In 2023, a New York Times investigation reported that over a two-year period, HHS could not reach more than 85,000 migrant children and had lost contact with roughly one-third of those it placed with sponsors. But Chris Clem, who served as a senior adviser at HHS in 2025 after a 27-year career in the U.S. Border Patrol culminating as chief of the Yuma Sector in Arizona, told The Post that the true number of missing children was significantly higher and placed responsibility squarely on Becerra, who led HHS under President Biden.
The single largest border crisis of our lifetime and the largest amount of kids this does rise to the secretarys level, and he should have had a finger on the pulse daily, Clem said. He argued that the sheer magnitude of the crisis meant Becerra could not credibly claim ignorance, and that such a breakdown in oversight could only occur if leadership failed to insist on rigorous tracking and follow-up.
Clem also questioned whether Becerra had learned anything from his time at HHS, warning that Californians should be deeply wary of elevating him to the governors office. When he was in charge of kids before, he didnt do a very good job of it, he said.
During Becerras tenure as HHS secretary from 2021 through early 2025, nearly 480,000 unaccompanied migrant children crossed the southern border and entered the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS division tasked with their care. Numbers are always funny because part of the problem was the lack of accountability at HHS at the time, Clem told The Post, suggesting that internal systems were so disorganized that even basic data could not be trusted.
Clems remarks follow disturbing allegations previously reported by The Post from a caseworker at the Pomona Fairplex emergency intake center in Southern California, who claimed that young children were released to poorly vetted sponsors, siblings were separated, and vulnerable minors disappeared after leaving federal custody.
The whistleblower alleged that some of these children were later trafficked for sex or forced into labor, painting a picture of a system that effectively delivered minors into the hands of abusers.
Children at the facility were allegedly roused in the dead of night, at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., handed small bags of belongings, and quietly removed from the center. We have no idea who was going to be transporting the children, the whistleblower said, adding she now suspects the timing was so nobody would see the children leaving the facility.
The scope of the problem has been acknowledged even within the Biden administrations own ranks. In June, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that the Trump administration had identified at least 146,000 migrant children who were unaccounted for during the Biden years.
According to Clem, the root of the crisis lies in Becerras insistence on moving children out of federal custody as quickly as possible, even at the expense of basic safeguards. Becerra notoriously likened the placement process to a Ford assembly line, a comparison Clem views as emblematic of a mindset that prioritized speed over safety and due diligence.
It was about getting kids out of government custody as fast as possible, and thats where the horrors occurred because there was very little vetting of sponsors, Clem said. Thats when they become missing.
Clem further noted that Becerra personally toured HHS facilities, undermining any suggestion that he was unaware of how the system was functioning on the ground. [Becerra] did visit his facilities, so he cant act like he didnt know, Clem added, arguing that the secretary had ample opportunity to intervene but chose not to.
Becerras campaign has pushed back aggressively, attempting to shift blame to President Donald Trump and his first term in office.
Jonathan Underland, a spokesperson for Becerra, claimed that Where Sec. Becerra rebuilt the child protection systems Trump gutted, Steve Hilton has proudly allied himself with the president who put those children in harms way who illegally sent a father to a foreign prison, whose separation policies continue to take children away from their parents, and whose ICE agents shot two fathers dead this month.
Hilton is bought in. He doesnt get to cash out now, Underland said, framing the race as a referendum on Trump-era immigration enforcement rather than on Becerras management of the migrant child crisis. The strategy reflects a familiar Democratic playbook: deflect scrutiny from current policy failures by invoking Trump, even as the most egregious abuses cited by whistleblowers occurred on Bidens watch.
Jeff Nesbitt, who served as Becerras public affairs chief at HHS, also defended his former boss in a statement to The Post.
Secretary Becerra inherited a disorganized, chaotic mess from President Trumps first term, Nesbitt said. He and his HHS team re-built the sponsorship and vetting network from the ground up during the Biden administration.
He insisted that no children were technically lost, arguing that HHSs legal responsibility ends once minors are placed with sponsors.
HHS role is to find sponsors for them while their cases are under review in the immigration law system. Becerras HHS team worked hard to find unaccompanied migrant children properly vetted sponsors. Once they were placed with sponsors, according to congressional authorization, that was the end of HHS responsibility for them.
Hilton, who has made Becerras HHS record a centerpiece of his campaign, maintains that the issue goes to the heart of Becerras claim to executive competence and moral leadership. This is going to be a defining issue for Becerra because it defines him, Hilton told The Post.
He keeps telling us that the reason California should elect him governor is because of his experience lets look at how he ran HHS. He failed the most basic task of humanity and decency, which is protecting the vulnerable children that were in his care.
Hilton rejected the notion that the scandal can be dismissed as the inevitable result of an overburdened bureaucracy struggling with historic migrant flows. This wasnt incompetence. This wasnt an agency that was overwhelmed and just couldnt cope, he said. These shocking abuses of children happened as a direct result of deliberate action taken by Becerra.
For voters, the emerging picture is stark: a Biden cabinet official who presided over a system that lost track of tens of thousands of children, a bureaucracy that treated minors like units on an assembly line, and a candidate now asking Californians to trust him with the states highest office. As more whistleblowers come forward and additional records surface, the question is not whether this controversy will shape the governors race, but whether Becerras handling of migrant children will be seen as a bureaucratic misstep or a moral failure that disqualifies him from higher office.
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