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The 16-year-old Honduran child sitting in a migrant shelter bathroom showed no signs of fighting back.
Yet the Bexar County, Texas, sheriff’s deputy shot the child with a Taser and repeatedly pulsed it on his torso and thighs. In all, the child experienced 35 seconds of electric current running through his body, rendering him immobile.
After picking him up, a second deputy chose a nickname for the refugee child, who’d just lost voluntary control of his muscles, who was screaming in pain and agony and demanding to know where they would take him.
“El Stupido,” he said.
That scene comes from the deputies’ body camera footage, which we obtained as part of our long-running investigation into the treatment of migrant children in the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
As part of that work, we sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year for failing to turn over records under the Freedom of Information Act. The government eventually provided records on 266,000 unaccompanied migrant children who’d passed through the refugee agency’s care from late 2014 to late 2020.
Now, reporters Aura Bogado and Laura C. Morel are out with their latest investigation based on those records, showing how a number of the refugee agency’s shelters have turned to police after children allegedly fought, damaged property or had mental health needs.
You can read their story here. And you can watch a short video based on the bodycam footage here, though be warned that it shows violence against a child and can be disturbing.
Follow @aurabogado and @lauracmorel on Twitter to keep up with the story.
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