Steve Hilton is escalating his attacks on Xavier Becerra, demanding federal records including a former contractors laptop that he says could reveal what the Biden administration knew about migrant children being funneled to traffickers.
The Republican gubernatorial hopeful is zeroing in on his Democratic rivals tenure as secretary of Health and Human Services, arguing that Becerra and senior Biden officials were aware that minors were being handed over to sex and labor traffickers.
According to the New York Post, Hilton laid out his demands in a letter sent Monday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, highlighting a laptop belonging to a former federal contractor that he said has already been turned over to congressional investigators.
The letter names the whistleblower as Tarek Joey Kadourah, a former supervisor for federal contractor MVM, which was responsible for transporting migrant children from government custody to purported sponsors.
If the testimony of whistleblowers is accurate, and the contents of the laptop are as reported, the role of Xavier Becerra and the Biden White House in the trafficking of thousands of migrant children represents one of the biggest and most shocking scandals in U.S. government history, Hilton wrote, framing the allegations as a potential historic abuse of power.
Campaign finance disclosures show Hiltons team covered $406.10 in car service and meal expenses tied to Kadourahs travel for interviews in August, underscoring the whistleblowers emerging role in the race.
In a recent interview with journalist Lara Logan, Kadourah described disturbing scenes in the field, alleging that agents reported children sobbing, girls attempting to escape during transportation stops, and adults with apparent gang tattoos arriving to collect minors.
Some of them even looked like gang members, Kadourah said, pointing to what he described as MS-13 tattoos, Mexican mafia tattoos.
He recounted that a military veteran and former corrections officer on his team raised alarms after two men with prison tattoos showed up to claim a child, and said he repeatedly warned his supervisor only to be brushed off with: Hey, theyve been vetted. Everythings OK. Keep your mouth shut. Just keep doing the job.
Hilton wrote that Kadourahs laptop apparently contains evidence that Becerra and the Biden White House knew the federal government was transporting children directly into the hands of traffickers.
The letter, however, does not spell out the specific contents of the device or show that investigators have independently corroborated Kadourahs claims, leaving key evidentiary questions unresolved even as the political stakes rise.
Hilton further asserted that his campaign had been told Homeland Security Investigations is probing the matter, including specifically the role of Xavier Becerra.
The letter offers no separate confirmation of that claim, but the suggestion of an active federal inquiry adds pressure on the Biden administration, already under fire from conservatives over border chaos and lax vetting.
Becerras campaign responded by attacking Hiltons motives and credibility rather than addressing the underlying allegations about migrant child placements.
Its sad to watch Trumps chosen candidate Steve Hilton be consumed by his own desperation, Jonathan Underland, a spokesperson for the Becerra campaign, told The Post in a statement.
Nothing is working, so hes inventing Q-Anon brainrot to distract from a weak policy platform that would make billionaires richer and hurt working families.
The dismissive tone reflects a broader Democratic strategy of branding critics of Bidens border and migration policies as conspiracy theorists, even as mounting evidence shows systemic failures in the handling of unaccompanied minors.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, by contrast, acknowledged the scale of the crisis, telling The Post that ICE Homeland Security Investigations is dedicated to locating the 450,000 unaccompanied children that came in through the border under the Biden administration. Sadly, during those four years, many of these children who came across the border unaccompanied were placed with unvetted sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers, the spokesperson said, confirming what conservatives have warned about for years.
The Trump administration has located more than 150,000 of these children, they continued, drawing a sharp contrast between the prior administrations failures and the current administrations efforts to track and protect vulnerable minors.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a separate request for comment, leaving unanswered how aggressively the agency is now pursuing leads tied to alleged trafficking networks.
Citing border czar Tom Homan, Hilton said roughly 140,000 children remain unaccounted for, though his letter does not clarify how many are confirmed missing versus simply unreachable through government follow-up.
Hilton also wrote that some children placed in dangerous situations had died, a grim allegation that underscores the human cost of what critics describe as the Biden administrations reckless open-border posture.
John Fabbricatore, a senior adviser for the Trump administration at HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, told The Post in August that investigators had uncovered more than 40 migrant children dead, some of whom had since become adults: We found kids in sex trafficking. We found kids who were murdered, kids who were in slave labor.
Hiltons latest letter builds on prior reporting by The Post in which a former Biden administration official accused Becerra of referring to migrant children as little Juanitos and Juanitas while running HHS.
Becerra has denied using that phrase about migrant kids, and Underland defended his record at the department by saying, Jealousy breeds contempt, a response that sidesteps the substance of the whistleblower accounts while casting critics as politically envious.
Hilton urged Mullin to coordinate with current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and congressional investigators to determine precisely what Becerra knew and how he responded to warnings from staff and contractors about trafficking risks.
Becerra is now asking the people of California to make him their governor, Hilton wrote. They deserve to know the truth about what he did before they cast their votes.
For voters concerned about border security, child welfare, and accountability in Washington, the unresolved questions around the Kadourah laptop and the fate of tens of thousands of migrant children go far beyond partisan sniping.
Hilton is betting that Californians will demand answers from a man who once oversaw the very system that, by multiple accounts, placed with unvetted sponsors children who ended up in the hands of smugglers and sex traffickers, and that those answers will matter when they step into the voting booth.
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