Justice Department alleges sexual abuse of migrant children in non-profit shelters

The US government has filed a lawsuit against its largest provider of emergency shelters for migrant children, accusing the country of widespread sexual abuse of vulnerable children whose protection the agency is entrusted with.

The civil rights lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Austin, Texas, alleges that Austin-based Southwest Key Programs Inc. repeatedly sexually abused and molested unaccompanied children in violation of the Fair Housing Act.

The lawsuit alleges that employees of the nonprofit subjected migrant children who were sent to their facilities because they were unaccompanied by relatives or guardians at the southwest border to “severe sexual abuse and rape.”

The employees were also accused of making sexual advances, requesting nude photos, attempting to start inappropriate relationships, making sexual comments and gestures, looking lasciviously at children, and touching children inappropriately.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for the victims of the alleged abuse and harassment, as well as civil penalties and any other compensation “that may be necessary in the interest of justice,” the lawsuit says.

If the children are encountered by U.S. Border Patrol or Customs and Border Protection officials, they are transferred to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Refugees, which contracts with nonprofit organizations like Southwest Key to provide them with shelter and care until the children can be released to a family member or guardian.

The government paid Southwest Key more than $3 billion for the service between 2015 and 2023, the lawsuit says. The nonprofit organization is the largest government provider of housing and care for unaccompanied migrant children, the lawsuit says.

On Thursday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a Justice Department statement on the lawsuit that the Department of Health and Human Services would “closely review our assignment of children to care programs to ensure the safety and well-being of every child in the Department of Health and Human Services’ care.”

Southwest Key responded to the lawsuit on Thursday, saying the safety, health and well-being of children housed at its 29 facilities in Texas, Arizona and California are the facility’s top priority.

The nonprofit said it is in constant contact with the Office of Refugee Resettlement “to ensure that the children and young people entrusted to our care are safe.”

The lawsuit “does not accurately reflect the care and commitment of our staff to the youth and children,” the statement said.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit details numerous allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment, arguing that in at least some of those cases, the nonprofit’s employees knew about ongoing violations but failed to report them to their colleagues.

The lawsuit says some of the allegations contained therein came from documents and video evidence from Southwest Key itself. Some of these were sent to the refugee agency and others came from internal investigations or reviews, according to the lawsuit.

In 2019, a girl reported to her teacher that a Southwest Key youth worker, described as a shift supervisor, repeatedly raped, abused and threatened her at a facility called Casa Montezuma in Channelview, Texas, the lawsuit says, citing a Southwest Key report. She claimed the shift supervisor warned them not to report the alleged crime, and he swapped shifts with coworkers so he could target them, the filing says

“The child reported the abuse by giving a note to his teacher on a day when she knew the shift supervisor was out of state on vacation,” the lawsuit states.

Another report of alleged abuse detailed in Southwest Key’s documents occurred in 2019 and 2020 at the Casa Padre shelter for migrant children in Brownsville, Texas. There, a youth worker employee allegedly had a long-term relationship with a teenager that was known to coworkers but went unreported, the lawsuit says.

A video shows the employee kissing the teenager, but she ran away when the relationship came to light, the file said. It also said the employee allegedly helped other children escape from the facility.

In 2019, the number of migrant children detained by the government or its contractors rose to nearly 70,000. That number was further driven up by the family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is designed to deter migrants from entering the United States.

The situation was chaotic at times, as the U.S. Border Patrol could not hold the children for more than 72 hours. There was a fight for beds for them, and detention camps made of tents and makeshift shelters were set up. The children were eventually taken to residential facilities run by Southwest Key and other nonprofit providers, or placed with relatives.

Most of them came from Central America at the time. President Donald Trump approved nearly $3 billion this year to house and care for the children. Although some of them were separated from their families at the border, all were considered unaccompanied.

Since family separation ended, unaccompanied children continue to show up alone at the border, and spending on housing and caring for unaccompanied migrant children more than doubled last year, to $6.5 billion, according to government figures.