Candidates for California governor Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton made a flurry of claims about each other’s records in Wednesday’s debate on CNN.
Hilton charged his opponent and longtime Democrat with dismantling safeguards for migrant children during his time as federal health secretary under the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Becerra said his Republican rival had described President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement as “perfect” and that Hilton had also called for the deportation “of every farmworker in California.”
CapRadio fact-checked these and other eye-opening claims from the debate.
Did Becerra 'dismantle' safeguards for migrant children?
One of Hilton’s most pointed attacks accused Becerra of putting migrant children in danger during his time as health secretary.
"You dismantled the vetting that should have made sure that they were with a safe, protective family or sponsor," Hilton said. "You sent thousands of young children directly into the clutches of child sex and labor traffickers."
Hilton went further, saying hundreds of thousands of children were still missing, and that 100,000 of them were under the age of 10.
Becerra, who led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2021 to 2025, dismissed the attack as "retread Trump talking points."
He said the first Trump administration had left behind a broken system for migrant children, and that he improved it. "We changed all that," he said. "I'm proud of the record we have when it came to providing care to these kids."
What does the record show?
The accusation traces to a 2023 Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigation. It found that as shelters near the southern border overflowed in 2021, Becerra's agency pushed to release unaccompanied children to sponsors quickly and missed or ignored signs they were being funneled into illegal, dangerous jobs. Reporters found children working overnight in slaughterhouses, roofing homes and running machinery in factories.
A February 2024 report from the HHS Office of Inspector General found that in 16% of cases it reviewed, required sponsor safety checks went undocumented. In more than one in five cases, the agency failed to make a required check-in call a month after a child was placed. In some cases the first call came months later, or as long as a year.
Becerra has said any exploitation happened after children left his agency's care. "What employers did after they left our care, after they left our jurisdiction ... was not on my watch," he told CalMatters in May.
The claim that hundreds of thousands of children are missing echoes a Republican talking point that predates the governor’s race. A 2024 Associated Press review found it lacks context: the figure refers mostly to children the government lost track of on paper, many of them living with sponsors, not children confirmed missing or harmed. And the reporting centered on labor exploitation, not rings of sex traffickers.
Hilton stands on solid ground when he says Becerra's agency weakened vetting and lost track of thousands of children. He overstates it when he describes hundreds of thousands of missing kids and child sex trafficking.
Did Hilton say 'all California farmworkers should be deported'?
Becerra accused Hilton of supporting the deportation of “every farmworker in California” and repeatedly tied Hilton to Trump’s immigration policies.
“You said Trump’s ICE immigration policies and his raids were — your words — perfect,” Becerra said. “You said that every farm worker in California should be deported.”
Hilton’s response was that “That’s simply not true.”
The accusation stems from a previous CNN gubernatorial debate in May when Hilton was asked if he would support deporting undocumented farm workers.
Hilton skirted the answer saying the governor of California does not make that decision, the president does.
But he did not specifically say that every farm worker in California should be deported.
Hilton has expressed support for broader federal immigration enforcement and said Trump’s deportation campaign was going “perfect” during a Fox News interview early last year.
Does California have the highest poverty and jobless rates?
During the debate, Hilton repeatedly blamed Becerra and other Democrats who have controlled California’s state government for the last 15 years for the state’s struggles on poverty, unemployment, homelessness and cost-of-living.
We investigated some of his criticisms:
“ Right now, because of your policies, we have the highest poverty rate and the highest unemployment rate in America,” Hilton claimed.
But is any of that rooted in facts? When it comes to the rates, Hilton is nearly spot on.
U.S. Census data shows California, from 2023 to 2025, had the second highest supplemental poverty rate at 17.8% behind only Louisiana’s 19%. The supplemental poverty level takes into account the cost of basic needs and government assistance.
Hilton’s claim about California’s jobless rate was also on track. In September, the state was tied with Connecticut and Oregon for the highest unemployment rate nationally at 5.1%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But pinning the blame entirely on Becerra’s “policies” is a stretch, as larger global economic forces affect employment and poverty, and not just one political party’s decisions.
What energy commitments are candidates making?
Gas prices and how to lower them was another major point of disagreement between Becerra and Hilton during the debate.
Hilton argued California could lower prices by producing more oil in the state and relying less on imported crude oil.
“It makes absolutely no sense right now to do what we’re doing, importing oil halfway around the world from the Middle East and from South America when we have abundant oil reserves here,” Hilton said.
Hilton has proposed increasing in-state oil production as part of his plan to bring gasoline costs down to $3 a gallon.
But UC Berkeley energy expert Andrew Campbell said increasing California oil production would not be enough to lower prices that much.
“There’s no way that prices can be brought below $3 dollars in California without addressing the Iran War,” Campbell said.
Becerra also pointed to the war with Iran when discussing gas prices.
During the debate, he said the national average was about $2 a gallon higher than when Trump started the war in Iran.
According to the California Energy Commission, disruptions involving the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran War have pushed up the global price of crude oil, which in turn affects national and state gasoline prices.
But Becerra’s claim that ending the war would bring prices down by a specific amount is harder to establish.
Campbell said that ending the conflict would likely reduce oil and gasoline prices, but he said it is difficult to predict by how much because prices also depend on global supply, inventories, refining capacity and other factors.
Why are California gas prices so high?
The average price of gasoline in California was $6.40 on Thursday, nearly $2 per gallon higher than the national average, according to AAA. One reason they’re so expensive is that California has the highest state gas tax in the nation at 73.6 cents per gallon, according to the Tax Foundation.
The California Energy Commission cites other factors, including “the isolated nature of the state’s transportation fuels market,” and the state-mandated special gasoline blend that costs more but reduces air pollution. In addition, it cites California’s environmental program fees and local, state and federal taxes.
