DOJ says largest housing provider for migrant kids engaged in pervasive sexual abuse

Employees of a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied migrant children repeatedly subjected minors in its care to sexual abuse and harassment, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in a new lawsuit. 

From 2015 through at least the end of 2023, multiple employees at Southwest Key Programs, the country’s largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied children, subjected unaccompanied children in their care to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct,” the lawsuit said. 

Minors housed in its shelters were subjected to severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos and entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, among other acts, according to the lawsuit.  

The children range in age from as young as five years old to teenagers just shy of eighteen years old, and primarily come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  

Southwest Key employees allegedly discouraged children from reporting abuse, in some cases threatening them and their families, according to the lawsuit. 

Employees “exploited the children’s vulnerabilities, language barriers, and distance from family and loved ones,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Texas on Wednesday.  

Despite being aware of the “severe and pervasive harms,” Southwest Key failed to take appropriate action to protect the children in its care, the DOJ said. 

“In search of the American Dream, children often endure perilous journeys on their migration north to the southern border,” Alamdar Hamdani, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said in a statement. “The sexual harassment alleged in the complaint would destroy any child’s sense of safety, turning what was an American Dream into a nightmare.” 

In a statement, a Southwest Key spokeswoman said the complaint “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,” Anais Biera Miracle said in an emailed statement. 

Southwest Key is the largest private care provider for unaccompanied children in the United States and currently operates at least 29 shelters in Texas, Arizona and California that hold a total of 6,350 unaccompanied children.  

Children who arrive at the southern border with Mexico unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians are the responsibility of the federal government.  

The Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is responsible for sheltering unaccompanied migrant children, and contracts with facilities like Southwest Key to provide the shelter.  

It’s a lucrative industry. Between fiscal years 2015 and 2023, Southwest Key received over $3 billion in funding from HHS, according to the DOJ. 

During that period, Southwest Key received over 100 reports of sexual harassment or abuse of the children under its care, the DOJ alleged, but the company took no action. 

“On numerous occasions Southwest Key employees failed to report knowledge or suspicion of sexual abuse or harassment of children, including when the abuse was observed by others or was ongoing,” the lawsuit stated. 

One report describes a Southwest Key Youth Care Worker who repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old girl at a facility in El Paso, Texas, in 2022. He entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their “private area,” and threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse, according to the lawsuit.

In another instance Southwest Key documented, a supervisor at a Texas shelter in 2019 would regularly switch assignments with other staff so that he could be alone with a teenage girl, who he repeatedly raped, abused and threatened.

She reported the abuse by passing a note to her teacher when the supervisor was on vacation, according to the lawsuit. Following her report, the child was transferred to a different shelter. 

The lawsuit cited a 2019 report of a clinician who asked inappropriate questions about a girl’s sexual experiences, asked if she wanted a hug and “looked over her body.” 

In another, documents detailed an employee sexually touching boys during transport in May 2022. 

In a 2020 incident detailed in "numerous" reports, per the lawsuit, a Southwest Key worker ran off with a fifteen-year-old boy from an Arizona shelter. The worker took the boy to a hotel room for several days where he paid the boy for sex acts. The worker was later indicted and pleaded guilty in March 2022 to felony attempted sexual conduct with a minor. 

The DOJ alleged Southwest Key employees also threatened children into silence.  

A Southwest Key employee at a Brownsville, Texas, shelter discouraged a child from pursuing a report of harassment by saying it would delay her reunification with her family or adversely affect her placement with a sponsor, according to the lawsuit.

In another case described in the lawsuit, a child with visible physical marks resembling hickeys on her body and breasts reported a sexual assault to a Southwest Key employee who instructed her to “cover up” the marks. The child reported to another, trusted Southwest Key employee, who notified a supervisor of the incident. The supervisor told the employee not to write an official report. 

Southwest Key shelters experienced an influx as children were separated from their families at the border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy in 2017 and 2018. It resulted in more than 5,000 children being put into federal custody after they were removed from their parents or guardians at the southern border. 

The company has come under scrutiny before.  

Videos from Arizona Southwest Key shelters in 2018 showed staffers physically abusing children. Two facilities lost their licenses. Around the same time, the state Department of Health Services moved to revoke the licenses of all Southwest Key's Arizona shelters, citing a failure to provide proof that its workers had received required background checks.