AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Employees of the largest provider of housing for unaccompanied migrant children in the United States repeatedly sexually abused and molested children in their care for at least eight years, the Justice Department said Thursday, in a shocking series of crimes that occurred as the company garnered billions of dollars in government contracts.
Employees of Southwest Key Programs Inc., including supervisors, raped, touched or solicited sex and nude photos of children beginning in 2015 and possibly earlier, the Justice Department said in a lawsuit filed this week. At least two employees have been charged since 2020.
The nonprofit is the largest provider of housing for unaccompanied migrant children, working with grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It operates 29 migrant shelters — 17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona and two in California — with space for 6,350 children. The company’s largest shelter, in Brownsville, is a converted Walmart with a capacity of 1,200.
Southwest Key disputed the accuracy of the claims in a written statement Thursday evening.
The provider has been an important, but somewhat unobtrusive player in the government’s response to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrant children who have been living in the Netherlands in recent years and during the separation of thousands of families in 2017 and 2018 under the administration of President Donald Trump. The government awarded the provider more than $3 billion in contracts from 2015 to 2023.
The Border Patrol must transfer custody of unaccompanied children to Health and Human Services within 72 hours of their arrest. The agency releases most children to their parents or immediate family members after a short stay in Southwest Key or shelters run by other contracted providers.
Health and Human Services reported 6,228 children across its facilities as of June 17, according to the most recent data on its website, which does not break down the numbers by facility or provider. The department declined to say how many children are currently in the care of Southwest Key or whether the agency is continuing to assign children to its facilities.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Austin, where Southwest Key is based, is detailed, saying authorities have received more than 100 reports of sexual abuse or harassment at the provider’s shelters since 2015.
Among the allegations in the lawsuit: A worker “repeatedly sexually abused” three girls, ages 5, 8 and 11, at the Casa Franklin shelter in El Paso, Texas. The 8-year-old told investigators that the worker “repeatedly entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their ‘private space,’ and threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse.”
The lawsuit also alleges that in 2020, an employee of the Tucson, Arizona, shelter took an 11-year-old boy to a hotel and paid him to perform sex acts over several days.
Children were threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they reported abuse, the lawsuit said, adding that victim testimony revealed that in some cases, staff were aware of ongoing abuse and failed to report it or concealed it.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday that the complaint raises “serious concerns about patterns or practices” at Southwest Key. “HHS has zero tolerance for all forms of sexual assault, sexual harassment, inappropriate sexual conduct, and discrimination,” he said in a statement.
Southwest spokeswoman Anais Biera Miraclea said Thursday that the carrier is still reviewing the complaint, which she said “does not accurately reflect the care and dedication our employees provide to youth and children.”
Like Florida, Texas revoked the licenses of facilities holding migrant children in 2021 in response to the extraordinary influx of people across the border with Mexico, leaving what some critics say is a gap in oversight.
The lawsuit comes less than three weeks after a federal judge has granted the Justice Department’s request to lift the court’s special oversight of HHS’s care of unaccompanied migrant children. President Joe Biden’s administration argued that new federal safeguards made the special oversight unnecessary, 27 years after it began.
There will continue to be special court oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Border Patrol.
Leecia Welch, an attorney for unaccompanied children in the court-ordered supervision case, said the allegations against Southwest Key are “absolutely disgusting” and blamed Texas’ license suspensions on “a powder keg waiting to explode.”
“While I applaud the efforts to correct the serious injustice done to these children, I hope the federal government will also take some responsibility for the role it played,” said Welch, deputy director of the legal division of Children’s Rights.
Neha Desai, another lawyer involved in monitoring the court, called the allegations “deeply disturbing and shocking.”
“I hope the government takes the most aggressive steps possible to ensure that the children currently in the Southwest Key facilities are not in danger,” said Desai, senior director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law.
The Associated Press left email messages Thursday with the offices of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the attorneys general of Arizona and California.
The Southwest grew in 2014 as large numbers of unaccompanied children crossed the border, leaving U.S. authorities unable to contain the number of refugees.
The company has been caught in the middle of immigration controversies and has always maintained that its mission is to provide quality care for children. It calls its facilities “casas,” Spanish for home.
“A typical day for children at a Southwest Key Casa includes breakfast, school, lunch, dinner, homework, snacks, and bedtime,” the Justice Department said in its complaint.
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This story has been edited to show that the HHS figures are for all children in migrant shelters, not Southwest Key specifically.
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Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas. Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.