AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Employees at the nation’s largest single housing provider for migrant children repeatedly sexually abused and harassed children in their care over the past eight years, the Justice Department alleges.
The Justice Department alleges in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that Southwest Key employees, including supervisors, have been raping, groping and soliciting sexual acts and nude images of children since at least 2015. At least two employees have been charged since 2020, according to the lawsuit.
Austin-based Southwest Key is the largest provider of housing for unaccompanied migrant children, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The company owns 29 shelters for migrant children, with a capacity of 6,350 children, including 17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona and two in California. Its largest shelter is in Brownsville, with a capacity of 1,200.
The latest data posted on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website reports that there were 7,762 children in contracted facilities as of May 31, but does not provide a breakdown by shelter or provider. Health and Human Services did not say how many children are currently in Southwest Keys Care or whether the department is continuing to assign children to the care.
The lawsuit details some of the alleged abuse, alleging that authorities have received more than 100 reports of sexual abuse and harassment at the shelter since 2015.
Among the allegations in the lawsuit is that staff at the Casa Franklin shelter in El Paso, Texas, “repeatedly sexually abused” three girls, ages 5, 8 and 11. The 8-year-old girl told investigators that staff “repeatedly came into her bedroom in the middle of the night and groped her ‘private areas’ and threatened to kill her family if she revealed the abuse.”
The lawsuit also alleges that an employee at a shelter in Tucson, Arizona, lured an 11-year-old boy to a hotel in 2020 and paid him to engage in sexual acts over a period of several days.
The lawsuit says children were threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they reported the abuse, and that in some cases victims said staff knew the abuse was happening but failed to report it or hid it.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday that the complaints “raise concerns about serious patterns and practices” at Southwest Key. “The Secretary of Health and Human Services has a zero-tolerance policy toward any form of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, inappropriate sexual conduct or discrimination,” he said in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed less than three weeks after a federal judge granted a Justice Department request to end the court’s special oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services’ custody of unaccompanied migrant children. President Joe Biden’s administration argued that the new protections made the special oversight unnecessary 27 years after it began.
The Associated Press sent a message to the company seeking comment on Thursday.
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This story has been edited to correct that the HHS figures are for all children in migrant shelters, not just Southwest Key.
