According to the lawsuit, migrant children were housed in abusive homes for years. Critics blame a lack of supervision

MCALLEN, Texas (AP) — As allegations of sexual abuse mounted at the largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children in the U.S., authorities continued to place the children entrusted to them in a system that lacks adequate oversight, advocates say.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Justice Department alleges that employees of Southwest Key Programs Inc. sexually abused and molested children in their care for at least eight years. During that time, the nonprofit amassed billions of dollars in government contracts and continued to house thousands of unaccompanied migrant children entering the United States.

It was unclear Friday how many children are currently housed in the Southwest Key homes. Federal officials also did not respond to questions about whether any action would be taken as a result of the lawsuit. Critics say the lawsuit reflects a system that has lacked accountability for years.

“The crux of this complaint is that there is this pattern and practice,” said Leecia Welch, deputy legal director at Children’s Rights. “If they are filing this complaint because they saw a pattern and practice of sexually harassing and abusing these children while continuing to house children at Southwest Key during the same time period, that is why I have such a misunderstanding.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Southwest Key has 29 shelters for migrant children – 17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona and two in California – with space for more than 6,300 children.

The department did not respond to emailed inquiries about whether the children will continue to be housed there. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment beyond Thursday’s announcement of the lawsuit. Southwest Key did not respond to another emailed inquiry on Friday.

“ORR has continued to contract with Southwest Key despite knowing about some of these issues, so there is currently no other place to house all of these children,” said Diane de Gramont, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law. “And we would be extremely concerned if children then ended up in Border Patrol facilities for extended periods of time because ORR does not have enough beds for them.”

The Border Patrol must transfer custody of unaccompanied children to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours of apprehension, which releases most of these children to their parents or close relatives after a brief stay in Southwest Key or at shelters run by other contracted providers.

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of immigrant children, called for children in custody to be promptly reunited with their families and given access to lawyers and “independent courts to hear their claims for compensation.”

Past abuses at some Southwest Key shelters led to the closure of two large Arizona facilities in 2018. The state revoked their licenses for failing to properly conduct background checks on staff. Further investigations revealed several cases of physical and sexual abuse, including allegations from the government of El Salvador.

This abuse is evidence of the important role of government oversight that is now lacking in states like Texas and Florida, where Republican governors have revoked state licenses for facilities that house migrant children.

Critics say there is no comparable system for reporting and investigating child abuse and neglect by the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for housing migrant children.

“If there is a case of abuse, there is a hotline that anyone can call if the state intervenes,” said de Gramont. “There is a mandatory investigation… there is a strict sequence of events that must take place there.”

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

Daniel Hatoum, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who, among other things, defends children subjected to immigration company labor, said there could possibly be criminal charges 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 seeks damages for victims of the alleged abuse.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit comes less than three weeks after a federal judge granted its request to lift special judicial oversight of the Health and Human Services Department’s care of unaccompanied migrant children, known as the Flores Agreement, which gave migrant children’s lawyers broad powers to visit detention centers and interview 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 they went into effect. In a court filing, Health and Human Services official Toby Biswas painted a rosy picture of the new rules’ numerous protections for unaccompanied children, as well as independent accountability for their detention conditions.

Instead, supporters saw a gap in oversight.

Carrie Van der Hoek, deputy program director of the Young Center’s Child Advocate Program in Texas, said in an affidavit opposing the termination of the Flores agreement that her staff had reported about 10 cases of alleged abuse and neglect to the state Department of Family and Protective Services since Texas revoked its license 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 a child would receive the same response if they called the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s pre-programmed phones, facilities through which they can reach the government’s child abuse and neglect hotline.

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

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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.

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An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Justice Department filed the lawsuit on Thursday.