Steve Hilton is centering his campaign fire on Xavier Becerras tenure as Health and Human Services secretary, charging that his Democratic rival presided over a reckless system that weakened vetting for adults taking custody of unaccompanied migrant children and left more than 319,000 minors effectively missing.
Becerra, who led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under former President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, oversaw the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children before placing them with sponsors in the United States. According to WND, Hilton argues that under Becerras watch, the federal government abandoned its basic duty to protect vulnerable children in favor of speed and political optics.
During that period, Hilton maintains that more than 319,000 unaccompanied migrant children disappeared from the system after being released from HHS custody. His allegation rests on a report from the Department of Homeland Securitys Office of Inspector General, which concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not effectively monitor large numbers of children after they were handed over to sponsors.
The audit cited by Hilton found that more than 291,000 children were never placed into immigration proceedings at all. It further determined that over 32,000 minors failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings, a combined total exceeding 319,000 children whose whereabouts ICE could not reliably track.
Hiltons campaign has repeatedly underscored leaked audio from an internal HHS meeting in which Becerra appeared to prioritize rapid discharges over careful screening. This is not the way you do an assembly line, Becerra said, in remarks that critics say reveal a factory-style approach to moving children out of federal custody.
In the same recording, Becerra pressed staff to accelerate releases, saying, We need to get discharges up Every time we have to go to the Hill and explain why were spending so much money were spending more than $1,000 a day for kids who may not even have the legal right to be here. For conservatives, those words encapsulate the Biden administrations broader border posturefocused on processing numbers rather than enforcing the law and safeguarding minors.
Hilton has also drawn attention to testimony from former case managers in the Office of Refugee Resettlements Unaccompanied Children Program, who say they were pushed to greenlight sponsors despite unresolved red flags. We were constantly getting information that was false, and we were supposed to go with it, one former case manager said, describing a culture that allegedly rewarded speed over scrutiny.
According to the whistleblower, some adults claiming children could not even identify the minors they sought to sponsor, while others submitted fraudulent identification documents. In certain cases, there was no confirmation that the child ever arrived at the address provided, raising fears that the federal government may have funneled children directly into the hands of traffickers or exploitative employers.
Becerra has so far declined to address Hiltons latest accusations, but he brushed off similar criticism in a May interview with KTLA. When pressed about a claim that 85,000 migrant children were unaccounted for, Becerra responded, What you just read is not accurateI dont know if you got those talking points from Donald Trump.
The Daily Signal reported that Becerras campaign was contacted for comment and did not respond by the time of publication. That silence has only fueled concerns among critics who argue that the former HHS chief has yet to fully explain how so many children slipped through the cracks of a system he controlled.
Lance Christensen, vice president of government affairs and education policy at the California Policy Center, told The Daily Signal that many well-meaning Americans who support accepting migrant children fail to grasp the dangers those minors faced under Becerras policies. It breaks my heart because a lot of parents probably felt desperate in their home countries for any number of reasons. They often sent their children north alone. Those children fell into the hands of smugglers, traffickers, and cartels that used them to make money and didnt care about their welfare.
Xavier Becerra was one of the central figures in this whole process and absolutely dropped the ball, Christensen said. Because he dropped the ball, we have literally hundreds of thousands of childrenwe have no idea where they are. They got through a system and have now become basically a commodity for human trafficking.
While emphasizing that he supports legal immigration, Christensen argued that genuine compassion must be anchored in order and enforcement. Im all about welcoming people inbut there has to be a process, and it has to be done with wisdom and order. If you just let people run across the border, you cant control a lot of the illicit, illegal activity thats happening, often to the detriment of young children, women, and other innocent people.
For conservatives, the Becerra record has become a stark illustration of what happens when progressive immigration ideology collides with real-world consequences for the most vulnerable. Hiltons attacks ensure that questions about missing migrant children, lax vetting, and the Biden administrations border failures will remain at the center of the campaign, demanding answers from those who designed and defended the system.
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