California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is demanding that federal officials hand over records, including a former federal contractor's laptop, as he escalates allegations that his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, knew migrant children were being delivered to sex and labor traffickers while leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hilton sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pressing for the material and pointing to a laptop that he said had been turned over to congressional investigators.
A Whistleblower's Laptop Takes Center Stage
According to the New York Post, Hilton's letter identifies the whistleblower as Tarek “Joey” Kadourah, who supervised a transportation team for federal contractor MVM that moved migrant children from government facilities to sponsors. Hilton wrote that Kadourah's testimony and laptop could reveal what he called a major scandal involving Becerra and the Biden White House, writing that the laptop apparently contains evidence that the government transported children directly to traffickers. The letter, per the Post's reporting, does not establish whether investigators have substantiated Kadourah's allegations, nor does it independently confirm that Homeland Security Investigations is examining the matter, something Hilton says his campaign was told separately.
Kadourah has told his own story publicly. Speaking in an interview with Lara Logan, he said he worked as a site supervisor for MVM in the summer of 2021, when the company was transporting unaccompanied migrant children to sponsors under an HHS contract, according to PJ Media. “Their job was to make sure that they were fed, kept healthy, and then transported to sponsors,” he said of his team's responsibilities. He alleged that some children cried and refused to get into vehicles because they did not recognize the adults identified as their relatives, and he claimed Health and Human Services gave his team paperwork on sponsors that had not been verified.
Allegations of Gang Tattoos and Ignored Warnings
Per the Post's account of Hilton's letter, Kadourah alleged that agents reported children crying, girls attempting to flee at transportation stops, and adults with apparent gang tattoos arriving to collect children. Kadourah said some of those adults appeared to have MS-13 and Mexican Mafia tattoos, and he recalled that a military veteran and former corrections officer on his team raised concerns after two men with prison tattoos showed up to collect a child. Kadourah said he repeatedly alerted his supervisor about these concerns. Campaign finance disclosures reviewed by the Post show Hilton's campaign reported $406.10 in expenses for Kadourah's travel for interviews in August.
Hilton's letter also cites border czar Tom Homan in claiming that approximately 140,000 children remain unaccounted for, and he wrote that some children placed in dangerous situations had died — though the letter does not establish how many children were confirmed missing versus simply unreachable through government follow-up efforts, the Post reported. John Fabbricatore, a senior adviser for the Trump administration at HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement, told the Post in August that investigators had found more than 40 migrant children dead, though he said some of those counted had since become adults.
What Federal Oversight Reports Actually Found
Independent government audits give a more measured picture than the candidates' public sparring suggests. A February 2024 HHS Inspector General report found that required sponsor safety checks went undocumented in 16% of reviewed cases, and that the agency failed to make a required one-month check-in call after placement in more than one in five cases, according to KPBS. The same inspector general's office has said that effective sponsor vetting and timely post-release follow-up are important to reducing the risk of children remaining in unsafe environments.
About 479,000 unaccompanied children were referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement between 2021 and 2024, and the agency denied fewer than 1% of sponsorship applications in fiscal year 2024 after relaxing some vetting rules as referrals surged, per NewsNation. HHS has said it identified six types of fraud in the sponsorship process, including fake IDs, manipulated photographs, address fraud and children misrepresenting their age, and ORR data shows about 77% of reported Child Level Events involved intentional document or information fraud. The agency began updating its policies in February 2025 and found a backlog of 65,000 unanswered Child Level Event reports that March, the outlet reported.
Separately, a DHS Inspector General review found that ICE transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied children to HHS from fiscal years 2019 through 2023, and that roughly 32,000 of those minors failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings in that span, according to Nextgov. The same report found ICE did not initiate court proceedings for 291,000 unaccompanied minors formerly in HHS custody during that period. ICE concurred with a recommendation to build an automated system to track court appearances and addresses but did not commit to deploying one, citing competing priorities and resource constraints.
Claims of Trafficking Remain Unproven, Fact-Checkers Say
Those gaps in tracking and follow-up have fueled sharply different interpretations of how many children are actually at risk. Tom Homan has said the government could not find more than 300,000 children released to unvetted sponsors, but immigration experts and attorneys told the BBC that such figures largely reflect missed court dates and missing paperwork rather than proof the children disappeared or were trafficked, describing the issue as bureaucratic rather than nefarious. KPBS, fact-checking claims made during the candidates' CNN debate, concluded Hilton was on solid ground in pointing to weakened vetting and lost track of children, but said he overstates matters when he describes hundreds of thousands of missing kids and child sex trafficking. KPBS also cited a New York Times investigation that found some children released through the system were discovered working overnight in slaughterhouses, roofing homes and operating machinery in factories.
Becerra Campaign Pushes Back
According to the Post, Becerra campaign spokesperson Jonathan Underland said Hilton was acting out of desperation and inventing claims to distract from his own policy platform, which Underland said would benefit billionaires and harm working families. Underland defended Becerra's leadership of HHS. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to the Post's request for comment.
The dispute is unfolding against a separate controversy from last month, when a former Biden administration official accused Becerra of referring to migrant children as “little juanitos and juanitas” while he led HHS. Becerra denied using that phrase. Hilton has urged Mullin to work with current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and congressional investigators to establish what Becerra knew and how he responded to warnings, writing that California voters deserve to know what Becerra did before they vote.
A Governor's Race Defined by the Allegations
Hilton and Becerra have surged to the top of California's crowded gubernatorial primary, with billionaire Tom Steyer trailing behind them, per the Post's reporting. The two faced off during CNN's California gubernatorial debate in Burbank on September 30, and Hilton held a press conference in Los Angeles's MacArthur Park on October 13 to press the allegations further. With the race still unsettled and the underlying federal oversight questions unresolved, the fight over what Becerra knew — and when — looks likely to remain a central flashpoint through the rest of the campaign.
