EXPOSE: Whistleblower Lifts the Lid on Xavier Becerra’s “Assembly Line” of Unaccompanied Minors
- Rex Ballard
- 60 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Kids Handed to Unvetted Sponsors, Separated from Siblings, and Lost by the Tens of Thousands
A former caseworker at the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site has come forward with damning new details about how the Biden-Harris administration’s Health and Human Services Department, under then-Secretary Xavier Becerra, processed unaccompanied migrant children. The whistleblower’s account, delivered to Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, describes a system that prioritized speed over safety, accepted fake documents, conducted only phone or WhatsApp “vetting,” separated young siblings, and released children into the night with no meaningful follow-up.
The caseworker, a first-generation American whose family came from El Salvador and who raised two children in Southern California, worked six months at the Pomona Fairplex site in 2021. She alleges children were subjected to chaotic conditions, sexual harassment and abuse inside the facility, and then rapidly released to sponsors whose identities and addresses could not be verified.
“A Complete Joke”
According to the whistleblower, unaccompanied minors often arrived with names and phone numbers written in Sharpie on their arms. Staff would call the listed number. In some cases, the adult on the other end did not even know the child’s name — only that they were supposed to pick someone up.
“We were constantly getting information that is false, and we had to go with it,” she said. Newly created IDs featuring selfie photos and fake birth certificates were routinely accepted. In-person verification of sponsors was not allowed. Confirmation was made over the phone or via WhatsApp. Once released, caseworkers were barred from conducting welfare checks. “We still have no proof that the child went to that address,” she stated.
Children were frequently woken at 2 or 3 a.m., given a small bag of belongings, and taken away. The whistleblower said she now believes the timing was deliberate so that fewer people would see the transfers. “We have no idea who was going to be transporting the children.”
One especially painful case involved a five-year-old girl the staff called “Grace” and her seven-year-old sister. The younger girl was distraught after being separated. “I miss my sister, and I don’t know where she’s at,” she told staff. When the caseworker pressed for answers, she was told the sisters had been split because older children were abusing younger ones. The seven-year-old left first; Grace left later. No one could confirm either child reached a safe destination.
In another account, a 14-year-old girl became pregnant after being raped. She had allegedly been forced into sex work by a woman described as her “so-called aunt” and sponsor.
The whistleblower also described sexual harassment inside the Fairplex itself, with 16- and 17-year-old boys targeting young female staff. Employees who reported incidents were fired, she claimed. Training was inadequate, and privacy was nearly nonexistent in the makeshift pods housing 20–35 children.
Becerra’s Pressure and the “Assembly Line”
These practices did not occur in a vacuum. In a leaked recording first reported by The New York Times, Becerra berated staff for moving too slowly: “If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line.”
Becerra toured the Pomona Fairplex in July 2021 and publicly called it a “model” for other sites — a place where children could be “healthy and safe.” The White House had directly contacted then-Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis to secure the Fairplex location. Solis, a former Obama Labor Secretary with deep union ties, facilitated the arrangement.
From 2021 to 2025, HHS under Becerra was responsible for roughly 480,000 unaccompanied children. Multiple independent reports and prior whistleblowers (including Tara Lee Rodas and Deborah White, who also worked at Pomona) documented the systematic weakening of sponsor background checks, the acceptance of fraudulent documents, and the placement of children with gang members, traffickers, and unrelated adults. NYT reporting found more than 85,000 children unreachable for follow-up calls. Hilton and others now cite figures of 280,000 to 319,000 children who went missing or unaccounted for under Becerra’s watch, with tens of thousands still unlocated.
Earlier whistleblowers from the same Pomona site described MS-13 and 18th Street gang members receiving children, sponsors using multiple addresses to collect large numbers of minors, and children sent to empty fields or dangerous workplaces. Rodas, who served as deputy to the federal case management team at Pomona, has repeatedly called the program a multi-billion-dollar child trafficking pipeline enabled by federal policy.
Campaign Fallout
Steve Hilton, the Republican nominee for California governor, is amplifying the new testimony under the banner “Becerra Tapes.” He has called Becerra’s record “despicable and disqualifying” and accused the former secretary of turning HHS into “the largest child trafficking operation in history.”
“These children were trafficked as a direct result of Becerra’s personal instructions to eliminate proper vetting of the adults these migrant children were being sent to,” Hilton said.
Becerra’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the New York Post or other outlets. In prior statements, Becerra has dismissed reports of “lost” children as inaccurate or as “MAGA talking points,” insisting the minors were placed with vetted sponsors who simply did not answer follow-up calls.
Why This Matters in California — and Beyond
Becerra is the Democratic nominee for governor of California. The same state that housed the Pomona facility and whose political leaders facilitated its rapid expansion is now being asked to entrust him with the state's highest office. The pattern documented by multiple whistleblowers, Inspector General reports, and investigative journalism is not a series of isolated mistakes. It is the predictable result of a deliberate policy choice: speed over safety, numbers over protection, political optics over the welfare of the most vulnerable.
Shasta County residents, and Californians generally, should demand answers. Where are the children who left the Fairplex in the middle of the night? How many were placed with sponsors who used fake documents? Why were basic welfare checks prohibited? And why has accountability been so elusive?
Read this critical analysis of the choices California voters are faced with: https://calirednews.substack.com/p/california-governors-race
The new whistleblower has given the public a clearer view of the machinery. The question now is whether California voters — and federal investigators — will finally force the system to answer for what it did to these children.
Sources:
Primary / Breaking Coverage
Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, “A Whistleblower Pulls the Cover Off Xavier Becerra’s Unaccompanied Minor Scandal,” RedState, July 27, 2026. https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2026/07/27/a-whistleblower-pulls-the-cover-off-xavier-becerras-unaccompanied-minor-scandal-n2204833
Marina Peña, “Exclusive | Xavier Becerra campaign rocked by whistleblower claims over missing migrant kids,” New York Post / California Post, July 27, 2026. https://nypost.com/2026/07/27/us-news/xavier-becerra-campaign-rocked-by-whistleblower-claims-over-missing-migrant-kids/
Steve Hilton, “Becerra Tapes” series and related X posts (including July 27, 2026 video release), @SteveHiltonx.
Prior Investigative Reporting & Whistleblower Testimony
New York Times investigations into HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement practices, sponsor vetting failures, and migrant child labor trafficking (notably February 2023 reporting on the “assembly line” comments and lost children).
Testimony of Tara Lee Rodas and Deborah White (Pomona Fairplex caseworkers/detailees) before U.S. Senate HELP Committee Republican roundtables and House Judiciary Subcommittee (2023–2024).
HHS Office of Inspector General reports on gaps in sponsor safety checks, documentation, and post-release follow-up for unaccompanied children.
