Watchdog agency to focus on shelters
Employee training and screening to be scrutinized at centers for migrant children
Three South Florida shelters holding migrant children — including one that initially blocked entry to lawmakers — will be scrutinized by a government watchdog agency.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General is launching a nationwide investigation that will focus on employee background screening and training, identification and response to incidents of harm and facility security.
At least three facilities are known to be holding separated children in Florida — the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, His House Children’s Home in Miami Gardens and Catholic Charities’ Msgr. Bryan Walsh Children’s Village in Cutler Bay.
Two of the facilities — the Homestead shelter and His House — have both had issues in the past with employees, including cases of sex abuse and extortion. The shelters are under scrutiny amid outrage over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown that has resulted in families being separated at the border.
At least 174 separated children are in Florida, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. At least eight children haven’t been able to reach their parents,
who have possibly been deported, he said.
The federal government provides funding to contractors or nonprofit agencies that run the facilities.
On Tuesday of last week, the Homestead shelter barred Nelson and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, from entering to check on conditions, citing an agency policy requiring at least two-weeks advance notice.
The facility, run by Cape Canaveral-based Comprehensive Health Services, allowed the Democratic lawmakers, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and reporters to tour the facility later in the week.
Nelson was among 40 senators who signed a letter demanding an investigation.
Trump has signed an executive order to keep families together, and federal officials say they are working to reunite more than 2,000 children who had been separated from their parents.
Shelter officials in South Florida have said they provide excellent care to children in their facilities, including providing access to education, medical care, counseling and field trips.
The Office of Inspector reviewed His House Children’s Home in 2017 after an employee pleaded guilty to extortion, which was first noted in a joint investigation into conditions at shelters by the Texas Tribune and the investigative reporting website Reveal.
Auditors found His House might not have followed policies regarding sponsor background checks, prompt medical care and provision of appropriate clothing for 652 children for the period reviewed from Oct. 1, 2013,
to Sept. 30, 2014, according to the report.
Leslie Rubero Padilla, a case manager at His House, pleaded guilty in 2015 to falsely telling the parents and guardians of immigrant children that they were required to send her money or the reunification process with their children would be delayed, according to court records.
Employees working at the Homestead facility have also been the subject of criminal investigations.
Less than a year ago, Merice Perez Colon, a youth care worker, pleaded guilty to swapping nude photos and video with a 15-year-old boy she met at the Homestead shelter. Court records show she met the boy at the facility in the summer of 2016 and struck up an online relationship with him later that year after he had been released and resettled in South Carolina. Colon was sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison.
The Miami Herald detailed a court hearing last week in which a 38-year-old youth care worker told a judge he had been hired to watch the children, despite facing a felony marijuana charge and being in drug court.
Gail Hart, a spokeswoman for Comprehensive Health Services, has declined to comment.
Wasserman Schultz, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, and other lawmakers have sponsored a bill that would require shelters to admit members of Congress and the press during reasonable business hours.
“To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, sunshine is the best disinfectant,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.
sswisher@sunsentinel.com, 561-243-6634 or @SkylerSwisher