Migrant youth shelter is ‘prison-like’
MCALLEN, Texas — Colleagues at a government-contracted shelter in Arizona had a specific request for Antar Davidson when three Brazilian migrant children arrived: “Tell them they can’t hug.”
Davidson, 32, is of Brazilian descent and speaks Portuguese. He said the siblings — ages 16, 10 and 6 — were distraught after being separated from their parents at the border. The children were “huddled together, tears streaming down their faces,” he said.
Officials had told them their parents were “lost,” which they interpreted to mean dead. Davidson said he told the children he didn’t know where their parents were, but that they had to be strong.
“The 16-year-old, he looks at me and says, ‘How?’ ” Davidson said. As he watched the youth cry, he thought, “This is not healthy.”
Davidson quit last week after being a youth care worker at the Tucson shelter, Estrella del Norte, for just a few months. He decided to speak out about his experiences there in hopes of improving a system often shielded from public scrutiny. His comments in a telephone interview offer a rare look into the operation of a migrant shelter.
Davidson said he became disillusioned after the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy began sending the shelter not only children who had crossed the border unaccompanied by adults, but also those separated from their parents.
The caseload is straining a facility he described as understaffed and unequipped to deal with children experiencing trauma, such as the three Brazilians. During his time at the shelter, children were running away, screaming, throwing furniture and attempting suicide, Davidson said. Several were being monitored last week because they were at risk of running away, selfharm and suicide, records show.
A spokeswoman for Southwest Key, the Austinbased nonprofit operating the shelter, disputed those allegations and said the shelter meets state licensing requirements, including for staffing ratios and training.
“Our staff have great expertise in dealing with this population,” said spokeswoman Cindy Casares. “We have very high professional development standards.”
Casares said staffing ratios were particularly important. “We cannot operate if we do not have the legally mandated number of staff required,” she said.
In recent months, she said, the nonprofit mounted “a very aggressive hiring campaign . ... staff that have a child care or social work background to be prepared to support the developmental and emotional needs of all children who arrive to our facility.”
According to Kenneth Wolfe, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman, the government contracts with 100 shelters in 17 states. The facilities now house 11,313 children.
Twenty-seven of those shelters in Arizona, California and Texas are run by Southwest Key. It is among the largest child migrant shelter providers nationwide, having served 24,877 children last year. Staff members must be bilingual and receive 80 hours of training before they can work with children.
The shelters are state-licensed, including the nearly 300-bed Tucson facility, a former apartment complex. This week there were 287 youth at the shelter, 70 of them age 13 or younger.
By law, the U.S. Border Patrol must turn unaccompanied children over to the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, known as ORR, within 72 hours. The children are then supposed to be placed with relatives or other sponsors.
Some immigrant advocates say that under the Trump administration, ORR has become an arm of immigration enforcement. This month, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., questioned conditions in the shelters after he was turned away while trying to visit the Casa Padre facility in Brownsville, Texas, also run by Southwest Key.
The company released a statement at the time saying “with ORR approval, Southwest Key shelters have welcomed elected and other public officials at our facilities in the past, and will continue to do so, because we are proud of the caring environment we provide these children.” The statement noted that “federal employees from ORR visit our shelters multiple times a week.”
The Health and Human Services Department said that “no one who arrives unannounced at one of our shelters demanding access to the children in our care will be permitted, even those claiming to be U.S. Senators.”