Xavier Becerra went to the television claiming that the Biden administration having lost track of children is mere “MAGA talking points.”

On air, he flippantly air quoted “lost kids,” as if it didn’t even happen. But the reality is, his agency was found to be looking the other way while kids were placed in unsafe conditions — likely with criminals — just to win political points.

Minimizing “lost children” to air quotes is awful. Especially considering that these were real kids. And there were a lot of them.

An Inspector General report indicated that from 2019-2023, 448,000 kids were processed through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which Becerra oversaw during his tenure as the HHS secretary under President Joe Biden. Of those children, most were released to sponsors.

But from that point, major problems emerged. More than 233,000 of those children were never given a court date. More than 43,000 never showed up to court dates. More than 31,000 of the children’s release forms had no contact addresses on them.

The subtitle of the report says it all: “ICE Cannot Effectively Monitor the Location and Status of All Unaccompanied Children After Federal Custody.” Why? One commonly stated reason was the children’s location was not received “from HHS.” Becerra’s HHS, that........

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