A whistleblower video released Thursday by California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton’s campaign includes new claims about the handling of unaccompanied migrant children during Xavier Becerra’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services, less than two weeks before the two are set to meet in a September 30 debate.
Hilton, a Republican and former Fox News host, is running against Becerra, a Democrat, for California governor. The video features Tarek Kadourah, who says he worked as a site supervisor for MVM, a contractor that worked with HHS to transport unaccompanied minors from intake centers, including the Pomona Fairplex, to sponsors.
Kadourah says he served as a liaison between HHS and the White House during the summer of 2021, overseeing the transport operation. Asked whether he believed children had been trafficked, he said: “Yes, I believe that did happen. I 100 percent believe it happened, and possibly worse, honestly.”
Kadourah described children as appearing “scared, and uncomfortable, and vulnerable, when they were supposed to be safe,” adding, “there’s no other way to say it, they were still being trafficked.”
“So, Health and Human Services was giving us paperwork that was not frickin’ verified. And all we were doing was picking up phone calls and saying, ‘Oh, okay, you’re so and so’s uncle?’ Whatever, and stamping it and moving it forward.”
According to Kadourah, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents involved in drop-offs told him children would sometimes cry and refuse to get into vehicles with the people identified as their sponsors. He said he asked the agents why, and was told the children did not recognize the people picking them up, despite HHS paperwork listing them as relatives such as an uncle, aunt or sibling.
Kadourah said the number of children refusing to leave with their assigned sponsors grew over time. “Where there was not just one or two children crying, refusing to get into a vehicle with strangers, but it’s like 20-30 crying, saying, ‘We don’t know who these people are. That’s not my Aunt and Uncle.’ That raised a lot of red flags, and that’s when they completely shut me out,” he said.
The video is the latest released by Hilton’s campaign under the banner “The Becerra Record,” a site that compiles figures on children processed through HHS during Becerra’s tenure and describes the camps he oversaw. The claims in the video have not been independently verified, and Becerra has not responded to the allegations in the material reviewed for this story.
The exchange comes as Hilton and Becerra prepare for their September 30 debate in the California governor’s race.
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