A senior federal health official now says roughly 330,000 cases involving migrant children released during Xavier Becerra's tenure as HHS secretary remain unresolved, and that more than 40 of those children are dead.

John Fabbricatore, a retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement executive who returned to the federal government in 2025 as a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, laid out the figures in an interview with the New York Post. Investigators have so far located 148,541 migrant children or former minors. But 330,345 cases remain open, a staggering backlog that includes children who have since turned 18 and aged out of the system's tracking entirely.

The numbers land with particular force because Becerra is now running for governor of California, with Election Day roughly three months away. And when reporters tried to ask him about the crisis at a press conference Wednesday at the State Capitol in Sacramento, Becerra ducked out and refused to take questions.

Fabbricatore describes dead children, sex trafficking, and slave labor

Fabbricatore did not speak in abstractions. He described what federal investigators found when they started working through years of poorly documented case files.

In his words:

"We found over 40 kids deceased. We found kids in sex trafficking. We found kids who were murdered, kids who were in slave labor."

He blamed a process that had been hollowed out under Becerra's leadership. Sponsors who took custody of children submitted fraudulent information, fake addresses, fake dates of birth, fake names, and HHS did little to verify any of it.

Fabbricatore told the Post:

"There were thousands of fraudulent addresses given, thousands of fraudulent dates of birth, names."

The consequences were predictable. Once a child was handed to a sponsor whose identity could not be confirmed, that child became nearly impossible to find. Fabbricatore put it bluntly:

"When you hand kids over to people that aren't being clear on their own identity, then those kids are next to impossible to find because you're dealing with smoke, you're dealing with ghosts."

These are not new allegations in broad outline. The New York Times published a major investigation in February 2023 documenting how HHS officials had begun churning children out to unvetted sponsors, with follow-up efforts often limited to a single phone call that did not even need to be answered or returned. A second Times report in December 2023 documented children released from federal custody who later died or suffered catastrophic injuries while working illegal and dangerous jobs.

But the scale Fabbricatore described, 330,000 unresolved cases and a confirmed death toll that has climbed from 27 to more than 40, represents a significant escalation of the known damage. Fox News reported last September that federal investigators had identified 27 deceased migrant children, whether by murder, suicide, or drug overdose, while locating more than 22,600 unaccompanied minors released during the Biden administration. The current figures dwarf those earlier numbers. The Trump administration's effort to locate migrant children lost during the Biden years has now accounted for nearly 150,000, but the unresolved caseload remains more than twice that size.

Becerra ran the process "like an assembly line," recordings suggest

Fabbricatore's account aligns with previously reported evidence that Becerra personally pushed to accelerate child placements. He was recorded pressuring staff to speed up the process "like an assembly line akin to Ford motors", a comparison that treated vulnerable children as units to be moved through a production quota rather than individuals whose safety required careful vetting.

When pressed on accountability, Fabbricatore rejected the idea that Becerra could plead ignorance. As the head of HHS, Becerra oversaw the Office of Refugee Resettlement and bore responsibility for its operations.

Fabbricatore said:

"When you're a leader, you are responsible for the organization, and to say that you had no oversight on something where you didn't know is a cop-out."

That assessment carries weight coming from a career law enforcement official who spent years at ICE before returning to the federal government to help clean up the mess.

Guatemalan siblings describe forced labor and attempted rape

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton's campaign has been releasing videos featuring migrant children who say they were abused after HHS placed them with sponsors. Two of those children, Juana Rebecca Pérez Santay and her brother Antonio David Pérez Santay, both Guatemalan nationals, described experiences that read like a catalog of exploitation.

Juana said she was 17 when she crossed the southern border. After her release to a sponsor, she alleged she was forced to work roughly 20 hours a day, never received pay, slept on a tile floor beside four young males, and was denied food and permission to drink water. She described what she called her worst moment:

"The worst moment [occurred when] a drunk man came into the house... and tried to rape me."

When she sought help, Juana said her sponsor told her to leave the man alone "because he's drunk and he doesn't know what he's doing." Her summary of her treatment was two words: "They treated me like a slave."

Her brother Antonio, who said he was 15 when he crossed the border, recalled being told he would be allowed to stay in the sponsor's home for just 15 days before being forced to pay for his own food and rent. His sponsor allegedly hid the phone numbers children are given to report trafficking, the one lifeline that might have connected him to help.

The pattern these stories describe, children handed to strangers with minimal verification, then trapped in conditions that amount to forced labor or worse, is exactly what Fabbricatore said investigators are finding across hundreds of thousands of unresolved cases. It is also consistent with the broader record of accountability failures surrounding Becerra and his political circle in California.

Becerra's campaign deflects; his former spokesman blames Trump

Becerra's campaign spokesperson, Jonathan Underland, did not respond to the Post's questions about the specific HHS figures. Instead, Underland attacked Hilton:

"No matter how many times Steve Hilton chases news cameras, packages his false claims in different press releases, or finds Trump appointees to carry his water, the same facts remain clear: they are doing whatever they can to divert attention from Trump's hateful policies and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] militia's targeting of innocent families."

That statement is worth reading twice. A campaign asked to account for more than 40 dead children and 330,000 unresolved cases responded by calling the question a diversion. Underland did not dispute the numbers. He did not offer an alternative accounting. He called the senior HHS adviser a "Trump appointee" carrying someone's water and moved on.

Jeff Nesbitt, Becerra's former HHS public affairs chief, offered a different defense. He argued that the Biden administration inherited a sponsorship system that had been "largely dismantled and destroyed" during Trump's first term, and that Becerra rebuilt it from the ground up.

Nesbitt told reporters:

"HHS and the Biden administration, under his leadership, rebuilt that network successfully, rebuilt the budget, increased the vetting, increased the sponsors, increased the facilities, step by step, brick by brick throughout the entire administration."

But that claim sits uncomfortably next to the documented record. The New York Times reported that Becerra was alerted to concerns about sponsors, and that the Biden administration waited until after the Times published its findings to improve its processes. If the system was rebuilt "step by step, brick by brick," the bricks were apparently laid after children had already been lost. The pattern of institutional failure and delayed accountability echoes other episodes from the Biden administration, where whistleblower concerns were sidelined until public exposure forced action.

Hilton frames the issue as disqualifying for Becerra's governor bid

Hilton, who posted about the trafficking allegations on X on August 5, has made the migrant child crisis central to his campaign against Becerra. He said the new HHS figures confirm what whistleblowers had already been telling his campaign.

"Xavier Becerra deliberately dismantled vetting procedures that should have made sure children were placed in a safe home with a responsible adult. Instead they were sent directly into the clutches of child sex traffickers and those who wanted to exploit them for slave labor."

Hilton added:

"There is no way that someone who put his own political career over the safety and well-being of so many thousands of children can possibly be elected governor of California."

Whether California voters agree remains to be seen. But the factual terrain is difficult for Becerra. His own agency's current leadership says 330,000 cases remain unresolved. More than 40 children are dead. The New York Times documented the failures in real time. And Becerra was caught on tape comparing the child placement process to an assembly line.

California's gubernatorial race is already drawing national attention for other reasons. Governor Gavin Newsom faces an expanding federal corruption probe that has reached his inner circle, and he has publicly claimed the investigation is political payback for his presidential ambitions. Becerra's troubles add another layer to a state political establishment that appears increasingly unable to answer basic questions about what happened on its watch.

Fabbricatore described a system in which cartels exploited broken processes to traffic children into the United States, and a federal agency that failed to keep track of them once they arrived. Investigators are now trying to reconstruct years-old records that were compromised from the start by fraudulent sponsor information and a leadership culture that prioritized speed over safety.

A government that cannot tell you where 330,000 children ended up has no business asking voters for a promotion.