A new video released Monday is putting former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra back under a very ugly spotlight, this time through the testimony of a young migrant woman who says the child migrant system he oversaw delivered her into abuse.
The testimony comes from Juana Rebecca Pérez Santay, who says she was only 17 when she crossed the southern border in May 2021 and entered the federal system for unaccompanied minors.
Becerra, now running against Republican Steve Hilton in the California governor race, has previously bragged about the operation and described the flow of minors through the system as an “assembly line.”
That description looks even colder in light of Santay’s account, which alleges that the very system meant to protect children instead pushed her into the hands of dangerous people.
Santay said plainly, “Xavier Becerra failed to protect us. He failed me because he didn’t protect me.”
According to her testimony, she was placed with a supposedly vetted sponsor through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS program responsible for handling unaccompanied migrant minors.
Santay, who speaks Spanish, said a social worker accompanied her onto a resettlement flight, but then abandoned her at the airport instead of making sure she safely reached the sponsor.
She said she called the number she had been given and was picked up by three men, who took her to a house where her situation quickly turned into a nightmare.
Santay said the woman running the house told her she would be working 20 hours a week making food, but the reality was far worse.
She said she was forced to work seven days a week, nearly around the clock, while being forbidden to touch the food she was preparing.
According to Santay, she was deprived of water and threatened with deportation if she dared to complain, which is exactly the kind of abuse government vetting is supposed to prevent.
“I have been sexually abused. I slept on a ceramic floor, in a room with four men who were sleeping there,” Santay said.
She also described a terrifying incident involving a drunken man who came into the house, focused on her, and attempted to sleep beside her.
Santay said the woman sponsor told her to allow it because, “he’s a drunk and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Santay’s full conclusion was devastating.
“Xavier Becerra failed me because he never cared about my safety. I ended up in the hands of child traffickers, and I was almost raped. They kept me like a slave; they didn’t let me talk to my family. If he were to become governor of California, it would be horrible, because I would not want what happened to me to happen to other children.”
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Hilton has been releasing testimony from whistleblowers and alleged victims tied to the ORR program, arguing that Becerra’s policies weakened protections and helped fuel exploitation under the respectable sounding banner of refugee resettlement.
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One public summary of the new testimony stated, “I was sexually abused because of Xavier Becerra.”
Another line from the testimony cut through the bureaucratic fog: “They kept me like a slave. Becerra failed to protect me.”
The allegations fit into a broader conservative concern that the Biden administration treated the border crisis like a political management problem instead of a human catastrophe.
While Democrats wrapped themselves in compassion talk, real children were allegedly moved through federal channels with astonishing speed and then handed over to people who should never have been trusted with them.
That is the part Washington would rather bury under paperwork, acronyms, and the usual polished excuses from the administrative class.
But a teenage girl sleeping on a ceramic floor in a room with men is not a paperwork issue.
It is a moral failure, and if Santay’s account is accurate, it happened under the leadership of a man now asking Californians to give him even more power.
The House may be focused on removing sexual predators from its own ranks, which is a worthy mission, but accountability cannot stop at Capitol Hill.
Anyone who built or supervised a system that allegedly allowed trafficking, forced labor, and sexual abuse of minors should face hard questions before being rewarded with higher office.
Becerra wants voters to trust him with the nation’s most populous state and one of the world’s largest economies.
Before California even thinks about handing him the keys, voters deserve real answers about the children who passed through his “assembly line” and the ones who say they were broken by it.
