On Monday, Republican Steve Hilton, who is running for Governor of California, shared disturbing testimony from a young migrant of life under the Child Migrant Program during the Biden administration.
Juana Rebecca Pérez Santay said the program, led by Hilton’s opponent in the governor’s race, Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, kept her held ‘like a slave,’ and delivered her to child traffickers.
Juana, who says she was 17 when she crossed the southern border in May 2021, entered the federal system for unaccompanied minors, which Becerra boasted at the time was an “assembly line” through which minors flowed.
After she arrived, she was placed with a “sponsor,” an adult approved to act as her legal guardian, a process run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of Health and Human Services, which Becerra oversaw.
She says she was taken from the shelter by a ‘social worker’ and left alone at an airport. She called the ‘sponsor’ who sent three men to pick Juana up.
After she got in their car, they told her, “You are going to stay here, but from today you are going to start working.”
Juana says she spent up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, making tortillas and food, while being deprived of food and water.
She was scared to raise concerns amidst constant threats of ‘sending her back.’
She was forced to sleep on a ceramic floor with grown men in a bed next to her.
She shared in the video released by Hilton, “I slept on a ceramic floor, in a room with four men who were sleeping there. A drunk man came in the house and stayed to sleep next to me and he wanted to……to rape me.”
“She (the sponsor) said, ‘Let him, because he is drunk and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’”
She continued, “Xavier Becerra failed me because he never cared about my safety. I ended up in the hands of child traffickers. I was almost raped.”
“They kept me like a slave.”
“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.”
Watch:
NEW TESTIMONY: “I was sexually abused because of Xavier Becerra.”
Migrant girl sent to child traffickers after Becerra dismantled HHS vetting procedures. Forced to work 20 hour days—no pay, no water. Slept on ceramic floor surrounded by men. Sexually assaulted.
“They kept me… pic.twitter.com/gcycSJO3Xy
— Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) August 3, 2026
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