By admin 
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton shared video testimony from two migrant children who were in the federal system while his opponent Xavier Becerra was HHS secretary, accusing the Democrat of running “migrant child abuse camps.”
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In the video, Juana Rebecca Pérez Santay alleges sleeping on a ceramic floor in a room with four men and sexual abuse while living with a sponsor she was placed with by the federal migrant system. She was 17 when she crossed the border into the United States, she said. Antonio David Pérez Santay said he was forced to work for his stay and food, and threatened with retaliation against his family in Guatemala if he attempted to leave the custody of his sponsors.
“It is absolutely extraordinary to me that Xavier Becerra has escaped accountability for this,” Hilton said. “Well, no longer. He’s now put himself in the firing line in this governor’s race, for the consequences of what he did as HHS secretary to so many children.”
Becerra has faced backlash for the way he handled a surge of unaccompanied migrant children when he was U.S. health secretary under President Biden. He responded to such attacks from opponents as a “MAGA talking point” in a debate in May, though the allegations are based on a 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation on child labor.
The testimony video shown to the press in Fresno on Wednesday was shot in Florida by independent investigative reporter Anthony Rubin, whom Hilton said was not paid by his campaign for the footage.
Becerra’s campaign and supporters argue he was dealing with a crisis inherited from the Trump administration due to child separation policies.
“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,” Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesman, said in a statement to The Bee. “Hilton is bought in. He doesn’t get to cash out now.”
How does Hilton think it should have been handled?
Hilton is an immigrant who moved to California from the United Kingdom 2012 with his wife and two sons.
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“I believe in immigration,” Hilton said. “That’s been such an important part of America’s story and California’s story over the years. But of course, we can’t have illegal immigration. It has to be legal.”
Hilton argues the surge of unaccompanied migrant children was a result of the Biden administration’s “open border policies” that he does not support.
Last week, Hilton held a press conference where a whistleblower alleged that migrant children at the Pomona Fairplex, which opened as a temporary emergency intake site in 2021, were rushed out the door, placed with adults using fraudulent identification, and separated from siblings.
Hilton said if he were in Becerra’s position, he would not have “dismantled the vetting process” for migrant child sponsors that was in place. He said strong vetting of every adult sponsor through calls, ID checks, DNA tests and home visits should have been maintained.
“I don’t understand how he could even do that, how he could put his personal political reputation ahead of that,” Hilton said. “But this is what you get from these career politicians.”
This story was originally published August 5, 2026 at 3:30 PM with the headline “Hilton accuses Becerra of running ‘abuse camps,’ shares migrant child testimony in Fresno.”
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