US accuses largest housing provider for migrant children of ‘severe’ sexual abuse

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a complaint against Southwest Key Programs, the largest provider of temporary housing for unaccompanied migrant children in the United States, accusing its employees of having sexually abused and harassed boys and girls in their care from at least 2015 through at least 2023. According to the lawsuit, employees at the Austin-based organization “subjected children in their care to severe or pervasive sexual harassment that has included, among other things, sexual contact and inappropriate touching, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos, entreaties for inappropriate relationships and sexual comments.”

The complaint, filed Wednesday in Austin, adds that Southwest Key “took insufficient action to prevent sexual harassment of the children in its care,” and concealed the facts once it became aware of their existence. The employees also threatened children to keep silent about the abuse. “In harassing these children, these Southwest Key employees exploited the children’s vulnerabilities, language barriers, and distance from family and loved ones,” reads the lawsuit. The victims range in age from five to 17 years old, and the Department of Justice collected more than 100 complaints of sexual harassment or abuse.

Southwest Key operates 29 shelters that provide temporary housing to unaccompanied immigrant children, or minors who enter the country without parents or other legal guardians and without legal immigration status. The non-profit’s reception centers are distributed among the States of Texas (17), Arizona (10) and California (2). In total, the shelters, which are the only home these children have while they wait to be reunited with a family member or other sponsor while their immigration cases are processed, have room for 6,350 children. The largest shelter, located in Brownsville, Texas, has 1,200 beds. The non-profit operates thanks to grants from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Among the various accusations is the case of a worker who in 2022 repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl, and an 11-year-old girl at a shelter in El Paso, Texas. The eight-year-old girl revealed that the accused repeatedly entered their rooms in the middle of the night to touch them in their “intimate area” and threatened to kill their families if they revealed the abuse. In another case, a worker at a Tucson, Arizona, center took an 11-year-old boy to a hotel for several days and paid the minor to perform sexual acts on him, according to the lawsuit.

“HHS has a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, inappropriate sexual behavior, and discrimination,” said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra on Thursday. “The U.S. Department of Justice’s complaint against Southwest Key raises serious pattern or practice concerns.”

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who worked on the lawsuit, said that “sexual harassment of children in residential shelters, where a child should be safe and secure, is abusive, dehumanizing and unlawful.” Clarke added that 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 again.”

The lawsuit seeks monetary damages to compensate the children harmed by the alleged harassment, a civil penalty to vindicate the public interest and a court order barring future discrimination and requiring Southwest Key to take appropriate steps to prevent such harassment in the future.

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