Worker at shelter for migrant kids convicted of sexual abuse

Jury finds 25-year-old man guilty of assaulting teens at Arizona center

A youth care worker at an Arizona shelter for migrant children has been convicted of sexually abusing teenagers who were under his supervision, federal prosecutors said Monday.

After a seven-day trial, the worker, Levian D. Pacheco, 25, of Phoenix, was convicted Friday by a jury in U.S. District Court of seven counts of abusive sexual contact and three counts of sexual abuse of minors, the prosecutors said in a statement. He will be sentenced Dec. 3. “Ensuring the safety of all individuals held in federal custody is of utmost importance to this office,” Elizabeth A. Strange, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona, said in the statement.

She said the verdict would send a message “that these crimes will not be tolerated.”

The jury convicted Pacheco of abusing seven teenage boys, some on more than one occasion, who were being held in detention pending possible deportation at Southwest Key’s Casa Kokopelli, a federally funded center in Mesa, Ariz., from late August 2016 through July 2017, prosecutors said in the statement.

Prosecutors first detailed their case against Pacheco, who is HIV positive, in July, saying he was accused of groping six teenage boys and performing oral sex on two others in bedrooms and a bathroom at the facility. The victims were ages 15 to 17. Workers checked on the children in their rooms at the center about every 15 minutes, prosecutors told a federal judge in January.

Southwest Key said in a statement Friday after the conviction that it was “grieved” to learn that abuse had occurred at one of its shelters, and that it had cooperated with investigators and was committed to transparency.

On Tuesday, Jeff Eller, a spokesman for Southwest Key, said in response to emailed questions that there were cameras throughout the center, except for in the bedrooms and bathrooms.

“We continue to look at our policies and procedures to ensure we’re doing everything possible to create a safe environment for the kids we serve,” Eller said.

The contractor is one of the largest operators in the highly secretive, billion-dollar business of housing, transporting and watching over migrants in federal custody on the southern border.

“We are committed to protecting the health and safety of children and holding accountable those who would sexually abuse these innocent victims,” Christian J. Schrank, a special agent with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, said in the statement announcing Pacheco’s conviction.

“When individuals violate their positions of trust and harm children, we will ensure these criminals are brought to justice for their actions,” he said.

The government-contracted shelters have a central role in the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration crackdown.

Pacheco, who was hired at the facility on May 23, 2016, did not submit his fingerprints for a background check to the state’s Department of Public Safety until Sept. 12 of that year, an agency official said in August.

Pacheco did not have a criminal record before his arrest in August 2017, according to court records.

Another employee at a separate Arizona facility, Southwest Key’s Casa Campbell in Phoenix, also has been charged with sexual abuse.

The worker, Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, was arrested in late July after he was seen kissing and fondling a 14-year-old girl in June, the authorities said.