In the last few weeks, we teamed up with WRAL News in North Carolina on an investigation into the government’s plan to open more shelters for unaccompanied children.
Our reporting uncovered that several of these providers have little experience in residential care, lack proper licensing and have troubling track records of state violations.
Among some of our findings:
- A facility run by the New Horizon Group Home in North Carolina was shut down by the state last year after inspectors found conditions inside that presented “an imminent danger” to the children. Under state law, New Horizon can’t obtain a license until 2023. But WRAL learned that the federal government awarded the home a $4 million grant to open a shelter for unaccompanied youth.
- The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the care of migrant children, also awarded the Baptiste Group, a Georgia-based staffing firm and building contractor, $13.3 million to open two shelters. But besides recruiting workers for other shelters in the past, Reveal could find no evidence that Baptiste has any experience in residential child care. Nor does it appear to have a facility to house children.
- We also found that two other providers have histories of abuse and children dying in their care. Texas officials have cited Sunny Glen Children’s Home for 94 violations in the last three years, according to state records. One staff member was accused of placing a child in a chokehold, records state. In California, a 23-month-old girl died after Alba Care Services placed her in a home where she fell while playing unsupervised.
This isn’t the first time the refugee agency has awarded grants to shelter providers with problematic histories. The government sent migrant children to Shiloh Treatment Center near Houston, even though three children died after being physically restrained by staff. Last summer, we broke the story that Shiloh was forcibly drugging migrant children with powerful psychotropic drugs, without proper consent.
“They’re supposed to be these child welfare experts,” said Joann Bautista, policy associate at the National Immigrant Justice Center, referring to the refugee agency. “You’d think they should know that when they give a grant to a provider who has no idea how to take care of children, that that actually makes no sense.”
Read our story here.
ACLU: NEARLY 200 CHILDREN UNDER AGE 5 HAVE BEEN SEPARATED FROM PARENTS
In the past year, the Trump administration has separated more than 900 children from their parents at the border, based on minor criminal records or unsubstantiated gang affiliations, according to lawyers representing the families.
After hundreds of migrant families were separated last summer under President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ruled that families could not be split apart “absent a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child.”
Earlier this week, ACLU lawyers alleged in court records that the government has used this exception to separate hundreds of families since June 2018. Of the 911 children separated from parents in the past year, the records state, 185 were under the age of 5, and 13 were less than a year old.
Our Aura Bogado recently broke the story about the government’s quiet expansion of shelters that house babies, toddlers and young children. One Phoenix facility housed children as young as 3 months old, all without their mothers.
Read the court records here.
WHAT WE’RE READING
Immigration agents are arresting tens of thousands of immigrants without criminal records. (Tampa Bay Times)
Florida immigration lawyers say their clients were pulled over on the way to work or arrested for minor traffic infractions. They say agents resorted to racial profiling, ordering random people to produce documentation who boarded Greyhound buses or were in Hispanic neighborhoods.
“This is not making me feel safe,” said Randy McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services in Miami. “They’re going after moms and dads of U.S. citizens instead of bad guys.”
Lily Montalvan of Fort Lauderdale said her husband, Walter Gozzer, had lived in the United States for more than 30 years and had no criminal record. Decades ago, he overstayed his visa. He was deported to Peru in March after a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gozzer, who Montalvan described as a hard worker, excellent husband for 20 years and loving father, left behind his two American-born children, Ronnie, 17, and Roxana, 5.
Without a steady job, making the mortgage and paying bills have been hard for Montalvan. Her daughter often asks when her father will come home.
“I can’t lie to my daughter,” Montalvan said. “I can only say, ‘Soon dad will return.’ ”
Immigration agents are posing as police officers or potential employers to make arrests, according to advocacy groups. (The Intercept)
Since then, ruses have only gotten more elaborate. The Immigrant Defense Project, a legal advocacy organization that serves attorneys and impacted communities in New York state, has documented more than 1,000 ICE raids in New York state since 2013. There was a case last year in which ICE posed as someone from the local DA’s office, Blaser said, and tried to arrange a meeting on a street corner to talk about a case. There have been other cases, she said, when ICE has called claiming to want to return a lost ID.
While efforts to pressure local law enforcement not to cooperate with ICE have been successful in some areas, it’s not clear that the police or local agencies are aware when ICE uses their likenesses — in apparent conflict with the 2005 memo. In New York, “the local precinct often will have no idea what’s going on,” Blaser said.
Sometimes, agents clarify that they are immigration agents only after an arrest is made. The National Immigration Justice Center filed a lawsuit in December 2018 against officers for allegedly conducting traffic stops without pretext. The suit documents two instances in which ICE agents wore vests that said “police,” and did not identify themselves as ICE, to conduct traffic stops in Chicago and detain those inside the vehicles. The suit is still being litigated, but the plaintiffs allege that “individuals were led to believe they were interacting with Chicago Police officers until they were taken to the ICE office in downtown Chicago,” Tara Tidwell-Cullen, director of communications for the National Immigrant Justice Center, wrote in an email.
Border agents didn’t believe he was a U.S. citizen. So an 18-year-old from Dallas spent 23 days in immigration custody. (Dallas Morning News)
He said he wasn’t allowed to shower and his skin was dry and dirty. He and 60 other men were crammed into an overcrowded holding area where they slept on the floor and were given only aluminum-foil blankets, he said. Some men had to sleep on the restroom area floor.
Ticks bit some of the men and some were very sick, Galicia said. But many were afraid to ask to go to the doctor because CBP officers told them their stay would start over if they did, he said.
“It was inhumane how they treated us. It got to the point where I was ready to sign a deportation paper just to not be suffering there anymore. I just needed to get out of there,” he said.
Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected].
– Laura C. Morel
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