Employees of the country’s largest provider of housing to unaccompanied migrant children encountered at the US’s southern border have been sexually abusing and harassing the children in their care for nearly a decade, the US justice department alleges in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Southwest Key operates 29 shelters across Texas, Arizona and California, housing and feeding undocumented children between the ages of 13 and 17, who come mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, crossing the US-Mexico border without their parents.
These children remain in the shelter until they are reunited with their immediate families or placed with a relative or other vetted sponsor while their immigration cases are litigated.
Southwest Key has partnered with the federal government on immigration at the border for nearly 20 years, and has received more than $6b in federal funding since 2008 from the departments of health and human services, education, labor, justice and others.
“From at least 2015 through at least 2023, multiple Southwest Key employees have subjected unaccompanied children in their care to repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct and a hostile housing environment, including severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos, entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, sexual comments and gestures, leering, and inappropriate touching,” the lawsuit says.
“In some cases, Southwest Key employees threatened children to maintain their silence.”
Through the lawsuit, the justice department aims for Southwest Key’s practices to be declared discriminatory, and therefore in violation of the Fair Housing Act, and seeks monetary damages to compensate the children allegedly harmed in Southwest Key’s care, as well as “civil penalties against Southwest Key to vindicate the public interest”.
“In search of the American dream, children often endure perilous journeys on their migration north to the southern border,” said US attorney Alamdar S Hamdani for the southern district of Texas, the federal district court working with the justice department’s civil rights division and the US attorney’s office for the western district of Texas, where the lawsuit was filed.
“The sexual harassment alleged in the complaint would destroy any child’s sense of safety, turning what was an American dream into a nightmare,” Hamdani said.
Southwest Key denies the justice department’s allegations.
In a statement to the Guardian on Friday, the organization wrote: “Southwest Key Programs’ primary focus is the safety, health, and well-being of each one of the children and youth we care for. We continue to review the complaint, and it does not present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children. We are in constant communication and continue to closely partner with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as we have done so for the past two decades to ensure the children and youth entrusted to our care are safe with us during their short stay with Southwest Key.”
