City says permits void for migrant kids shelter
Officials dispute nonprofit’s claim that facility is on the cusp of opening
A multimillion-dollar nonprofit seeking to open a facility east of downtown Houston to house migrant children who illegally cross the country’s southern border says it has all but one of the permits it needs to do so.
Houston city officials Wednesday disputed that characterization from Southwest Key Programs, however, saying two permits the group obtained in June were granted based on incomplete information that did not adequately describe the proposed use of the building. The Austin-based nonprofit, the officials said, must restart the permitting process from the beginning.
Southwest Key, which runs more than two dozen such migrant child care facilities in Texas, Arizona and California, found itself at the center of a national firestorm in June when it emerged that the group proposed to hold 240 immigrant children between the ages of “0 to 17” at the Houston site.
Advocates at the time said the facility, at 419 Emancipation Ave., would have been the nation’s first residential center slated to house small
immigrant children without their guardians for an extended period. Usually, such young children in federal custody are quickly placed with foster parents or released to relatives, but advocates said the Trump administration’s practice of separating families at the border necessitated a center that could provide longer-term care. Separated children may not have other relatives here.
Under Trump’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy, parents were prosecuted for the misdemeanor crime of illegal entry and served a few days in prison before being transferred to immigrant detention centers. Their children were placed in federal foster shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for unaccompanied immigrant minors.
The president since has rescinded that policy, and a federal judge in San Diego ordered the reunification of more than 2,600 separated children with their parents. More than 430 parents have been deported without their children, the government reported last week.
Finding enough room
Though that policy has ended, the number of children crossing the border without their parents has not slowed, and federal officials are scrambling to find enough room to detain them all. The Defense Department this week completed legal and environmental requirements to create housing for unaccompanied children at Goodfellow Air Force Base near San Angelo.
In June, more than 5,100 unaccompanied children were apprehended at the southern border, a 20 percent decrease from May, but more than any month since the beginning of the fiscal year last October, according to the latest federal statistics.
When news of the proposed Emancipation Avenue facility became public at the height of the furor over family separations at the border, Mayor Sylvester Turner rallied numerous nonprofit, religious and political leaders to denounce the “unjust and immoral policy,” and indicated he would be happy to slowwalk the city permits required to open the facility.
The issue was revived in earnest this week when state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat, tweeted Tuesday that Southwest Key representatives had told her that they could open within days if they received a necessary state license.
Southwest Key officials have confirmed that account, saying they lack only a city permit for a commercial kitchen, which they could operate without.
Fire Chief Sam Peña and Houston Public Works director Carol Haddock disputed that view Wednesday, saying information Southwest Key has submitted to the city shows the facility is most appropriately categorized as a “custodial care facility,” an institutional use, rather than a “shelter,” which is considered residential, in large part because the site will house children as young as 3, who will need to be separated by gender and age.
“There are certain requirements for egress, certain requirements for compartmentalization, certain requirements for other safety issues that need to be in place, especially because the occupants are not going to be free to enter and exit as they wish,” Peña said. “They’re under a supervised environment, so that changes the code requirement.” Previous permit void
As a result, Peña said, a city fire permit issued for the site on June 16 for a “shelter” is, essentially, void. Haddock said a similar building permit — a certificate of occupancy — from early June that envisioned a residential use, comparable to a hotel, also was void.
Southwest Key must start the application process over, Peña and Haddock said, by securing a building permit from Houston Public Works, then scheduling various fire inspections. A visit from city health inspectors also will be needed for the nonprofit to serve food to the children in its care. Neither gave a projected timeline for that process.
“They cannot occupy the building under the intended use using the current certificate of occupancy and using the current safety survey that’s in place,” Peña said.
In conversations with the city, Haddock said, Southwest Key officials have referenced state licensing language that labels their application a “residential” use, but she said the fact that state and city rules both use the same word does not mean the nonprofit’s interpretation of its requirements under city building and fire codes is correct.
Jeff Eller, a Southwest Key spokesman, said the company is reviewing the comments from city officials. He said the nonprofit operates two other shelters for unaccompanied minors in Houston, both which have residential, not institutional permits, and together are licensed by the state to hold up to 152 children.
The two, however, are licensed for children who are older than those the Emancipation facility is proposed to house. The youngest to be allowed at those two other facilities would be age 10.
A third Southwest Key facility in Houston, Casa Quetzal, can hold up to 261 children between the ages of 10 and 17 and has an institutional license because it is a repurposed hospital, Eller said. Its original permits were institutional, and he said it decided not to change them. State application pending
John Reynolds, a spokesman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees licensing for child care facilities, said Southwest Key’s application still is pending.
The agency accepted the application as complete June 26, and had 21 days to finish an inspection, though it can require follow-up inspections if it finds “deficiencies,” Reynolds said in an email. He declined to reveal specifics about issues at the facility until the process is done.
The agency has two months beyond that initial deadline to issue or deny a permit.
“We are still in the stage where we are evaluating the facility’s compliance with state licensing standards,” Reynolds said. “We may deny an application for a permit if the operation fails to comply with Minimum Standards, administrative rules or law.”