Add The California Post on Google Xavier Becerra faces a renewed scandal over his tenure as Joe Biden’s health secretary after a whistleblower came forward to expose the horrific levels of abuse and exploitation of hundreds of thousands of migrant children faced while in detention in California.
A caseworker at the Pomona Fairplex alleges children faced abuse and chaotic releases, were separated from young siblings, and sent to unverified addresses or secretly moved in the dead of the night — some never to be seen again — while the complex also accepted fake documents from sponsors.
During his time as Biden’s health secretary from 2021 to 2025, the U.S. faced an overwhelming border crisis, with just under 480,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border. The HHS was the federal agency legally mandated to care for and protect unaccompanied migrant children.
Multiple emergency intake sites were set up across the country to process the children, including in Texas, Florida and California, where there were three: San Diego, Long Beach and Pomona.
The whistleblower, who brought the allegations to rival gubernatorial Republican candidate Steve Hilton, is a first-generation American and mother of two who’s family moved from El Salvador and was raised in Southern California.
Her shocking claims come as Hilton zeros in on Becerra’s controversial and much-criticized term as health secretary ahead of the general election for governor of California on November 3. The latest poll for the race, by the Public Policy Institute of California, found the Democrat ahead of Hilton 61% to 36%.
Becerra toured the Fairplex complex in July 2021, and called it a “a model” for other sites across America and a place where kids could be ‘’healthy and safe.’’
In her six months working at the center in 2021, the whistleblower claims her concerns about what was happening to vulnerable children were routinely ignored because of pressure to reunify minors with sponsors, despite no clear evidence of any connection the adults had to the children or where they were going.
One haunting example from the caseworker involved a 5-year-old girl, ‘’Grace,” who arrived at the Fairplex with her 7-year-old sister.
Grace was distraught because she couldn’t find her sibling.
“I miss my sister and I don’t know where she’s at,’’ said Grace, claiming to not have not seen her sister for several days.
The caseworker claimed a 14-year-old girl got pregnant after being raped. She had allegedly been forced into sex work by a woman described as her ‘’so-called aunt’’ and sponsor.
When the case worker demanded to know where Grace’s sister was, she was allegedly told the girls had been separated because older children were abusing younger children.
‘’I felt heartbroken because nobody could tell her where her sister was,’’ she said.
The 7-year-old apparently left the facility first — with Grace leaving separately at a later date.
The caseworker also called the vetting process for sponsors “ridiculous.’’ She claimed selfies were accepted as ID, sponsors communicated through WhatsApp and their addresses often could not be verified.
But because caseworkers were unable to perform welfare checks, she never learned whether the two girls reached their destinations safely.
“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.
Hilton also refuted Becerra’s May claims that reports of 85,000 migrant children going missing were “not accurate” — claiming 280,000 children went missing under Becerra’s watch.
“Becerra’s actions are despicable and disqualifying,” he said.
The whistleblower also described horrific allegations of sexual harassment and abuse inside the Fairplex, with 16 and 17-year-old boys sexually harassing young female employees caring for children in the facility’s pods — and said employees who reported the incidents were fired.
Workers received inadequate training, she alleged, while children slept on cots in makeshift pods of roughly 20 to 35 minors with little privacy for sensitive interviews.
Children were also routinely woken at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., handed small bags of belongings and taken away.
“We have no idea who was going to be transporting the children,” she said, adding she now suspects the timing was so “nobody would see the children leaving the facility.”
The whistleblower blamed Becerra’s leadership for failing the children, claiming basic welfare checks could have prevented the harm.
“We failed, and I think we should all take responsibility, he should take responsibility,” she said.
The California Post reached out to Xavier Becerra for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
