Attorneys for the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, the largest provider of temporary housing for unaccompanied illegal immigrant children in the nation, over alleged widespread sexual abuse and harassment by employees of the firm.
Southwest Key manages twenty-nine shelter facilities in Texas, California, and Arizona with federal grant money obtained through the Department of Health and Human Services. The lawsuit filed on Wednesday by the Department of Justice contends that several employees have subjected the children to sexual contact, inappropriate touching, and solicitation of nude photos while the company “took insufficient action to prevent sexual harassment of the children.”
“Sexual harassment of children in residential shelters, where a child should be safe and secure, is abusive, dehumanizing, and unlawful,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks relief for children who have been abused and harmed, and meaningful reforms to ensure no child in these shelters is ever subjected to sexual abuse.”
The agency defines “unaccompanied children” as minors who enter the nation without parents or guardians and “without lawful immigration status.” They stay in the shelters until they are “reunited with their immediate families or placed with a relative or other vetted sponsor.”
Southwest Key has received over $3 billion in federal funds between 2015 and 2023, the same time horizon throughout which the company “has failed to follow its own policies for preventing, detecting, and responding to sexual abuse and harassment” in violation of federal rules.
Attorneys chronicled a variety of “severe, pervasive, and unwelcome” sexual abuse and harassment cases in the lawsuit, including the assault and rape of multiple children. One employee in El Paso, Texas, abused three girls between the ages of five and eleven, while another employee in Channelview, Texas, repeatedly raped and threatened a teenage girl.
United States Customs and Border Patrol encountered more than 88,000 unaccompanied minors in the first eight months of 2023 following the record 149,000 encountered in 2022.
Critics of the Biden administration observe that lackluster border security enables human trafficking and sexual abuse. President Joe Biden insisted last month that his softening of border enforcement policy did not contribute to increased illegal immigration over the past four years.
