Nonprofit seeking migrant facility sues city
Southwest Key says officials are illegitimately preventing shelter for children from opening
The Austin-based nonprofit trying to open a shelter to house migrant children east of downtown sued the city of Houston on Friday, alleging a discriminatory, baseless and politically motivated campaign to prevent it from opening the facility.
Southwest Key Programs alleges in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Houston, that the city is “manipulating” its permitting process, invalidating previously issued permits without due process and refusing to conduct inspections or issue new permits. The suit claims these actions are discriminatory based on some combination of the city’s opposition to federal immigration policies, interest in “political gain,” or the race, color, national origin, ancestry, alienage or immigration status of the unaccompanied minors who would be housed there.
The lawsuit asks a court to grant Southwest Key monetary damages and declare that it can proceed with its plans to open the facility.
“The city of Houston has ignored its own regulations, and past practices, and has knowingly misrepresented the facts to the state of Texas to deny Southwest Key a license to open the facility,” Southwest Key said in a statement released Friday. “City officials bent the rules and broke the law for the sole purpose of advancing the mayor’s political agenda.”
Southwest Key, which is paid more than $400 million by federal authorities to run 27 migrant child care facilities in Texas, Arizona and California, found itself at the center of a national firestorm in June when it emerged that it proposed to hold 240 immigrant children between the ages of “0 to 17” at a 54,000-square-foot building it had leased at 419 Emancipation Ave. The building formerly served as a shelter for homeless families and then, briefly, for those displaced by Hurricane Harvey.
“The city is only interested in the safety, security and well-being of children and will continue to enforce all building codes and regulations designed to accomplish that purpose,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement. “Southwest Key has repeatedly been asked to provide plans that meet existing building codes for the intended use of the facility at 409 Emancipation Street in Houston. They have failed to do so. Hopefully, they will realize that they are not exempt and must follow the rules like everyone else. We continue to wait for them to respond. In the meantime, we will review the pleading and respond accordingly.”
When news of the proposal became public at the height of the furor over President Donald Trump’s since-scrapped policy of separating children from their families at the border, Turner rallied numerous nonprofit, reli-
gious and political leaders to denounce the “unjust and immoral policy,” and indicated he would be happy to slow-walk the city permits required to open the facility.
“It’s ridiculous,” state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, one of the proposal’s most vocal opponents, said Friday. “They should spend the taxpayers dollars that they’re getting for taking care of the children they do have under their custody instead of wasting them on lawyer fees. The city is doing their job in protecting the health and safety of the children that they want to house there and to protect the health and safety of its residents.”
Turner and Garcia’s June news conference marked a turning point, Southwest Key’s lawsuit states.
The facility had received a fire inspection and been granted a certificate of occupancy as a “dormitory/shelter” under the building code, but city officials soon announced the nonprofit had provided them incomplete information about the facility and declared the proper use was “institutional,” not “residential,” and that the permitting process needed to start from the beginning.
City officials have stressed that the facility’s role in housing younger children who must be supervised is a key point, but the lawsuit argues that city codes make no such age-specific distinctions and says city officials’ own internal communications undermine the notion that the facility is a “detention center” requiring institutional permits.
The city’s decisions, the lawsuit states, have led state officials not to grant Southwest Key child care permits it needs to open the center, as the state license depends on applicants being in good stead with local code requirements.
If the shelter is not operating by Oct. 28, the lawsuit states, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement will terminate its contract for the facility with Southwest Key, which asks the court to force the city to pay the $3.3 million in costs it already has incurred at the site and $5.3 million in liabilities it faces.
The suit also asks a court to declare that children are not prevented from leaving the facility — not “detained,” in other words — and that there is no basis for labeling the facility an institutional rather than residential use.
Such a declaration also would resolve a dispute over the permits under which another Southwest Key center in Houston are operating. In a move that Southwest Key called “selective enforcement” but Turner and Fire Chief Sam Pena called “due diligence,” city officials last month began visiting the nonprofit’s other centers, and on Aug. 14 they announced that a Southwest Key facility on La Concha Lane near NRG Center permitted as a residential use in 2012 is not operating in accordance with that designation and must reapply for its permits.
Southwest Key has said it does operate a shelter in Houston under an institutional permit but does so because the building’s original permits were institutional and it decided not to change them upon leasing the facility.