Migrant children were housed in US shelters where they were mistreated for years, lawsuit alleges

As allegations of sexual abuse mounted at the largest provider of shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in the United States, officials continued to place more children in their care in a system that lacks adequate oversight, migrant rights advocates say.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Justice Department alleges that employees at Southwest Key Programs Inc. sexually abused and harassed children in their care for at least eight years. During that time, the nonprofit raked in billions of dollars through government contracts and continued to house thousands of migrant children who entered the U.S. unaccompanied by an adult relative.

It remained unclear Friday how many children are currently in the Southwest Key shelters, and federal officials did not respond to questions about whether any action would be taken in response to the lawsuit. Critics say the situation reflects a system that has lacked transparency for years.

“The whole point of this lawsuit is that there is a pattern and a practice,” said Leecia Welch, deputy legal director for Children’s Rights. “If they are bringing this complaint that they saw a pattern and practice of sexual harassment and the violation of these children while continuing to place children at Southwest Key during the same time period, that’s why I’m so puzzled.”

Southwest Key, which operates with grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), has 29 shelters for migrant children—17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona, and two in California—with capacity for more than 6,300 children.

HHS did not respond to emailed requests for comment asking whether children will continue to be housed there. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment beyond the lawsuit announcement Thursday. Southwest Key did not respond to an additional emailed request for comment Friday.

“ORR continued to award contracts to Southwest Key despite knowing about some of these issues, so right now there is no other place to put all of these kids,” said Diane de Gramont, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law. “And we would be extremely concerned if the kids then ended up in Border Patrol facilities for longer periods of time because ORR didn’t have enough beds for them.”

Border Patrol is required to transfer custody of unaccompanied children to HHS within 72 hours of their apprehension, and HHS releases most to parents or close relatives after brief stays at Southwest Key or in shelters run by other contracted providers.

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a nonprofit that advocates for migrant children, called for children in custody to be immediately released to their families and given access to attorneys as well as “independent tribunals to hear their claims for harm.”

Previous abuses at some Southwest Key shelters led to their closure, as did two large Arizona facilities that closed in 2018. The state revoked their licenses for failing to properly conduct background checks on their employees, and further investigation revealed multiple cases of physical and sexual abuse, and allegations from the government of El Salvador.

The abuse reflects the important role of state oversight, something now lacking in states like Texas and Florida, where Republican governors have revoked state licenses for facilities housing migrant children.

Critics say there is no equivalent system for reporting and investigating child abuse and neglect through ORR, which oversees the housing of migrant children.

“If an incident of abuse occurs when the state is there, there is a clear hotline that anyone can call,” de Gramont said. “There is a mandatory investigation … there is a strict series of steps that are supposed to be taken in that context.”

Some experts also questioned why the complaint was filed as a civil suit in which no one would be held criminally liable.

Daniel Hatoum, an attorney with the Civil Rights Project in Texas whose experience includes defending children in immigration-related labor, said a criminal complaint could come later.

“Corporate liability can be much more difficult for the Justice Department than civil liability and especially individual criminal liability,” he said. The civil suit seeks a jury trial and damages for victims of the alleged abuses.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit comes less than three weeks after a federal judge granted the agency’s request to lift special court oversight of the care of unaccompanied migrant children at HHS, known as the Flores agreement. That agreement gave attorneys representing migrant children broad authority to visit custody facilities and conduct interviews with staff and other migrants, as well as file complaints with the court.

President Joe Biden’s administration argued that the new federal safeguards made special oversight unnecessary 27 years after it was put in place. In a court filing, HHS official Toby Biswas painted a rosy picture of the new rules’ numerous protections for unaccompanied minors, as well as independent accountability for the conditions of their custody.

Instead, advocates saw a gap in oversight.

Carrie Van der Hoek, deputy director of the Young Center’s Child Advocacy Program in Texas, said in an affidavit opposing the termination of the Flores agreement that her staff reported about 10 cases of alleged abuse and neglect to the state Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) since Texas revoked licenses in 2021.

“When we made these reports, in some cases, DFPS officials told us they would not investigate the complaint because DFPS did not have jurisdiction over ORR facilities,” Van der Hoek said. “In other cases, we received no response and were not aware of any action taken by DFPS or any other state agency to investigate the report.”

Van der Hoek also said that if a child were to call the pre-programmed phones at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a facility that allows them to reach the state hotline for reporting child abuse and neglect, they would get the same response.

Biswas said they began conducting “in-depth reviews” of abuse allegations at Texas facilities starting in March 2022, and that they will begin their own investigations into alleged child abuse and neglect in Texas “or any other state if it stops conducting such inspections” starting in July of this year.

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