Becerra Faces Renewed Scrutiny Over Missing Migrant Children as California Governor's Race Heats Up

A Governor's Race Collides With an Unresolved Child Welfare Crisis

Xavier Becerra ran the Department of Health and Human Services from 2021 to early 2025 under President Biden. Now he's running for California governor. The agency he oversaw is back in the headlines over claims it lost track of tens of thousands of migrant children on his watch.

Chris Clem, who served as a senior adviser at HHS in 2025 after 27 years with U.S. Border Patrol, including a stint as chief of the Yuma Sector, told the New York Post the number of unaccounted-for children is higher than previously reported. Clem put the figure at roughly 130,000, well above the number cited in earlier reporting.

A 2023 New York Times investigation found HHS could not reach more than 85,000 migrant children over a two-year span, and that the agency lost contact with a third of the children in its care.

During Becerra's tenure, nearly 480,000 unaccompanied migrant children crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and entered custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS division responsible for their care, according to the New York Post.

In June, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the Trump administration had found at least 146,000 migrant children were unaccounted for during the Biden administration — a figure in the same range as Clem's estimate.

What Clem Is Alleging

Clem's core claim is about accountability, not just numbers. "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," Clem told the Post.

He also raised a pointed question about whether Becerra learned anything from the experience. "When he was in charge of kids before, he didn't do a very good job of it," Clem said, arguing Californians should be concerned as they consider his bid for governor.

Clem attributed part of the problem to a lack of accountability at HHS during that period. He also said Becerra's push to move children out of custody quickly — which Becerra reportedly compared to a Ford "assembly line" — amounted to an abdication of his duties. "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," Clem said. "That's when they become missing." Clem added that Becerra "did visit his facilities, so he can't act like he didn't know."

The Whistleblower Allegations

Separately, a caseworker from the Pomona Fairplex emergency intake center in Southern California told the New York Post that young children were released to inadequately vetted sponsors, siblings were split up, and some minors disappeared after leaving federal custody. The whistleblower alleged some of those children were later trafficked for sex or forced into labor.

The caseworker also described children being woken at 2 or 3 a.m. and handed small bags of belongings before being taken from the facility, saying "we have no idea who was going to be transporting the children," and that she now suspects the timing was so "nobody would see the children leaving the facility."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton unveiled additional whistleblower claims about child labor and sex trafficking, including allegations involving children as young as six, as part of his campaign against Becerra.

The Other Side of This

Becerra's campaign has pushed back. Spokesperson Jonathan Underland defended the candidate's record and placed blame on the prior Trump administration: "Where Sec. Becerra rebuilt the child protection systems Trump gutted, Steve Hilton has proudly allied himself with the president who put those children in harm's 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," Underland said. "Hilton is bought in. He doesn't get to cash out now."

Jeff Nesbitt, who served as Becerra's public affairs chief at HHS, also defended him: "Secretary Becerra inherited a disorganized, chaotic mess from President Trump's first term. He and his HHS team re-built the sponsorship and vetting network from the ground up during the Biden administration."

Still, Clem's core point remains at the center of the dispute: a cabinet secretary overseeing the largest unaccompanied-minor influx in modern history bears responsibility for whether his agency could account for the children in its custody. Whether an independent accounting will ever settle the true number of children from that period who remain unaccounted for — and what happened to them — is still an open question.