Rules waived, secrecy high at kids camp
Tornillo’s teens were not separated from their families at the border this summer. Nearly all came on their own from Central America hoping to join family members in the United States.
TORNILLO, Texas — The Trump administration announced in June it would open a temporary shelter for up to 360 migrant children in this isolated corner of the Texas desert. Less than six months later, the facility has expanded into a detention camp holding thousands of teenagers — and it shows every sign of becoming more permanent.
As of Tuesday, 2,324 largely Central American boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were sleeping inside the highly guarded facility in rows of bunk beds in canvas tents, some of which once housed first responders to Hurricane Harvey. More than 1,300 teens have arrived since the end of October alone.
Rising from the cotton fields and dusty roads not far from the dark fence marking the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the camp has rows of beige tents and golf carts that ferry staff members carrying walkie-talkies. Teens with identical haircuts and government-issued shirts and pants can be seen walking single file from tent to tent, flanked by staff members at the front and back.
More people are detained in Tornillo’s tent city than in all but one of the nation’s 204 federal prisons, yet construction continues.
An Associated Press investigation has found that the camp’s rapid growth has created serious problems, including:
None of the 2,100 staff members are going through rigorous FBI fingerprint background checks, according to a government watchdog memo obtained exclusively by AP. “Instead, Tornillo is using checks conducted by a private contractor that has access to less comprehensive data, thereby heightening the risk that an individual with a criminal history could have direct access to children,” the memo says.
Costs appear to be soaring more than 50 percent higher than the government has disclosed. What began as an emergency, 30-day shelter has transformed into a vast tent city that could cost taxpayers more than $430 million.
The government is allowing the nonprofit running the facility to sidestep mental health care requirements. Under federal policy, migrant youth shelters generally must have one mental health clinician for every 12 kids, but shelter officials have indicated that Tornillo can staff just one clinician for every 100 children, according to two immigration rights advocates who spoke with AP.
Federal plans to close Tornillo by New Year’s Eve will be nearly impossible to meet. There aren’t 2,300 extra beds in other facilities. A contract obtained by the AP shows the project could continue into 2020 and planned closures have already been extended three times since this summer.
Tornillo’s teens were not separated from their families at the border this summer. Nearly all came on their own from Central America hoping to join family members in the United States. They’re being held because federal immigration policies have resulted in the detention of a record 14,000 migrant children, filling shelter beds around the country to capacity.
Most of the children locked inside Tornillo are never charged with a crime; crossing illegally into the U.S. is a civil offense.
By law, migrant children traveling alone into the U.S. must be sent to a government shelter where they stay until they can be united with relatives or other sponsors while awaiting immigration court hearings. Migrant children’s time in government custody has grown longer this year, in part due to the Trump administration’s new requirements for deep background checks on sponsors who agree to take in young immigrants.
Confining and caring for so many children is a challenge. By day, minders walk the teen detainees to their meals, showers and recreation on the arid plot of land guarded by multiple levels of security. At night the area around the camp, that’s grown from a few dozen to more than 150 tents, is secured and lit up by floodlights.
‘NOTHING TO HIDE’
The nonprofit social service agency contracted to run Tornillo says it is proud of its work. It says it is operating the facility with the same precision and care used for shelters put up after natural disasters.
“We don’t have anything
to hide. This is an exceptionally run operation,” said Krista Piferrer, a spokesman for BCFS Health and Human Services, a faith-based organization that runs Tornillo. “This isn’t our first rodeo.”
She said BCFS has had no guidance from the Trump administration regarding what will happen after Dec. 31.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mark Weber, said no decisions have been made about whether Tornillo will close by year’s end as scheduled.
“Whatever it is we decide to do, in the very near future, we’ll do a public notice about that,” he said.
Because the detention camp is on federal property — part of a large U.S. Customs and Border facility — it is not subject to state licensing requirements.
In June, as detention centers for migrant children overflowed, Scott Lloyd, director of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, signed a memo granting BCFS a waiver to staff up Tornillo without the required child abuse and neglect checks, which raise a red flag about any potential employee who has a record of hurting a child.
Since the facility opened, BCFS has been checking job candidates’ national and local criminal histories and doing multistate sex offender registry checks, Piferrer said.
“Those are pretty comprehensive,” she added. “Standing up the site, it’s no easy feat, but we know what right looks like.”
BCFS has filed more than 30 reports on “significant incidents” at Tornillo since June, some involving interactions between the children and staff, but none of a sexual nature, Pifferer said. Weber did not immediately respond to questions seeking comment Tuesday.
For each night each child spends at Tornillo, taxpayers spend up to $1,200 to pay the direct care workers, cooks, cleaners, teachers and emergency services workers, according to information from staff members at two congressional offices. That’s well above the $775 that officials have publicly disclosed, and close to five times more than a typical youth migrant shelter costs. The most expensive hotel room in El Paso is about $200 a night.
BCFS did not dispute the cost, but said on average, actual costs are closer to $750 a day, which would bring current operations to more than $12 million a week.
The costs at Tornillo are so high because everything — water, sewage, food, staff and detainees — must be trucked in and out of the remote site.
BCFS says the shelter at Tornillo has actually had more media, elected officials, advocacy organizations, child welfare experts and attorneys tour the site than any other such operation. The nonprofit said confidentiality agreements are standard, to protect the privacy and rights of clients and those served.
But Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia, whose El Paso nonprofit works with recent immigrants, said Tornillo is far more secretive than other government shelters, where he and his staff are routinely allowed inside. At Tornillo workers must sign nondisclosure agreements and visitors are rarely allowed.
“What’s happening inside? Nobody knows. They cannot speak about what they see,” he said. “We’ve been doing this work for 20 years and we’ve never seen anything like this.”