USA sues operator of a home in Texas because employees allegedly sexually abused migrant children | San Antonio

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Shutterstock / Vic Hinterlang

A Border Patrol agent assists a group of unaccompanied minors from Central America who have crossed the Rio Grande.

Employees of the largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children have sexually abused and harassed minors in its care for years, the U.S. Department of Justice alleges in a lawsuit filed this week.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Austin, says federal authorities uncovered a pattern of “severe” and “widespread” harassment at shelters operated by Southwest Key Programs Inc. dating back to at least 2015. At least two employees of the Austin-based nonprofit have faced criminal charges since 2020, the government’s petition said.

“Sexually molesting children in residential care settings where a child should be safe and secure is abusive, dehumanizing, and unlawful,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Child sexual abuse is a crisis we cannot ignore or turn a blind eye to. This lawsuit calls for help for children who have been abused and harmed, as well as meaningful reforms to ensure that no child in these homes is ever subjected to sexual abuse again.”

Southwest Key operates 29 homes under federal contracts to care for migrant youth who come to the United States without parents or guardians. Seventeen of these facilities are located in Texas.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Southwest Key denied the government’s allegations but added that the claims made in the lawsuit were currently under official review.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit alleges that some Southwest Key employees knew about the abuse and either covered it up or did not report it. The government also alleges that victims were threatened with violence if they reported the abuse.

The lawsuit contains specific allegations of abuse, including a claim that a Southwest Key employee at a home in El Paso “repeatedly sexually abused” three girls, then ages 5, 8 and 11. In addition, an employee at a facility in Tucson, Arizona, took an 11-year-old boy to a hotel for several days and paid him for sex acts, the lawsuit says.

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