Tipsheet

Leading CA Gov Candidate Says US Should've Been More Aggressive on Asylum, Blames Trump for Border Chaos

Dmitri Bolt
Dmitri Bolt  |  April 24, 2026 1:30 PM

In a recent interview, California Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Xavier Becerra, who served as former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, said the U.S. should have taken a more aggressive approach to processing asylum claims and bringing illegal aliens into the country. He even placed part of the blame for the border crisis on the Trump administration, arguing it dismantled systems designed to assist unaccompanied minors crossing the border.

"You were part of the Biden administration for four years," CBS News' Major Garrett said. "Looking back, how much do you regret things that the Biden administration got wrong on the question of border security and internal immigration enforcement?"

"Well, certainly I wish we would have been more ambitious in the way we attacked the border security issue," Becerra replied. "I wish we would have been more aggressive in trying to process those who are trying to come into the country and claim asylum."

"We could have gotten through those cases a lot faster if we had treated the asylum process and these applications for asylum the way we treated COVID, where we surged resources to attack this," he continued. "Instead of allowing the asylum process to bulge out of proportion in the number of people who were seeking their hearings, because by law you have to provide them with a hearing, we could have addressed this much faster."

"I ended up having to deal with the situation with the number of kids that were unaccompanied by an adult who crossed over the border," he added. "And we had to manage a situation where we inherited from the Trump administration a dismantled system to care for these kids."

This comes as Becerra, once seen as an unlikely gubernatorial contender, in part due to criticism of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response, has surged in the polls, drawing heavily from Governor Newsom’s base.

He was also the only candidate in the race to give the governor an "A" grade on his response to the state's homelessness crisis.