The federal government lost track of at least 130,000 migrant children under Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra — and now he wants a promotion to governor of California.
If the man who couldn't account for kids in his own custody wants to run the most populous state in the union, voters deserve a real explanation. So far, Becerra's only answer is to call the scandal "Trump lies" — even though The New York Times documented the problem in 2023.
The numbers keep climbing. The Times found HHS couldn't reach more than 85,000 children over a two-year period. In June, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the Trump administration found at least 146,000 migrant children unaccounted for during the Biden years. Now Chris Clem — a former senior HHS adviser and 27-year Border Patrol veteran who retired as chief of the Yuma Sector — told the New York Post the real number of missing children is at least 130,000 and could be higher.
During Becerra's tenure from 2021 through early 2025, nearly 480,000 unaccompanied migrant children crossed the southern border and entered HHS custody through the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The system was overwhelmed — and Becerra's solution was speed, not safety. He infamously compared the child release process to a Ford "assembly line."
Clem pinned the crisis directly on that philosophy. "It was about getting kids out of government custody as fast as possible, and that's where the horrors occurred because there was very little vetting of sponsors," he told the Post. "That's when they become missing."
The horrors aren't abstract. A whistleblower caseworker at the Pomona Fairplex emergency intake site in Southern California alleged that children as young as six were released to inadequately vetted sponsors, siblings were separated, and some minors were later trafficked for sex or forced into labor. Children were woken at 2 or 3 a.m., handed small bags of belongings, and taken away. "We have no idea who was going to be transporting the children," the whistleblower said, suggesting the timing was deliberate — "nobody would see the children leaving the facility."
Clem didn't let Becerra off the hook: "The single largest border crisis of our lifetime and the largest amount of kids — this does rise to the secretary's level, and he should have had a finger on the pulse daily. When he was in charge of kids before, he didn't do a very good job of it."
The Post's editorial board traced the root of the crisis to Obama's 2012 DACA declaration, which incentivized minors to cross alone. The pattern is bipartisan: Obama created the incentive, Biden surged the numbers, and Becerra stripped the safeguards to keep the line moving. Both parties own this. Only the kids paid.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton brought the whistleblower allegations forward Monday, pushing the issue into the center of the California race. The question isn't going away: Where did those 130,000 children go? And if Becerra won't say — or won't even admit there's a problem — what qualifies him for more power over more lives?
