Feds shut facility for child migrants
Incident spurs closure of Youngtown shelter
The federal government has suspended operations at a Southwest Key shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in Youngtown, a spokesman for the non-profit confirmed on Friday.
The Southwest Key spokesman said its Hacienda Del Sol facility was shuttered following an unspecified incident. Southwest Key reported the incident to local law enforcement, the federal government and state regulators, spokesman Jeff Eller said.
Eller would not detail the incident that prompted the closure.
Children housed at the Youngtown facility were moved to other South-
west Key shelters in Arizona pending staff retraining at the shuttered facility.
“We wholeheartedly welcomed the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s decision to suspend operations at Hacienda Del Sol and are working to thoroughly retrain our staff,” Eller said.
Southwest Key, which operates 13 shelters for migrant children in Arizona, has come under intense scrutiny in the months since the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy came to light. The shelters experienced an influx of children separated from their families at the border under the zero-tolerance policy.
Last month, the Arizona Department of Health Services, which oversees the facilities, moved to revoke their licenses after it failed to comply with employee background-check requirements. The state launched a review after repeated reports of abuse of migrant children by Southwest Key employees, and after state inspections found repeated instances in which the company had not obtained the required background checks, known as fingerprint-clearance cards, from employees.
Southwest Key acknowledged it missed the deadline. Eller said the company and the state have an informal settlement conference scheduled for Tuesday related to the facilities’ licenses.
The suspension at the Youngtown shelter was disclosed to state legislators, Eller said.
Officials with the ORR and the ADHS couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Reports show several instances in which Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputies have been dispatched to the Youngtown shelter to investigate allegations of sexual assault involving children.
Reports show several instances in which Maricopa County Sheriff ’s Office deputies have been dispatched to the Youngtown shelter to investigate allegations of sexual assault involving children.
A boy was arrested in 2015 after his roommate accused the boy of placing his penis inside the roommate’s mouth and threatening him not to tell anyone, according to police documents. The boy reached a plea deal on a sex-crimes charge and was sentenced to probation.
In November 2015, a staff member walked into a shared bedroom and saw one boy bent over a bed and another behind him, according to a Sheriff ’s Office report. Both boys had their pants down. A nurse said one of the boys said he had been held down and penetrated. A medical exam showed no signs of penetration, and the case file doesn’t indicate an arrest was made.
The Youngtown shelter had two cases where staff members were alleged to have acted inappropriately with children, but neither case was substantiated.
There have been reports of sexual abuse involving staff members at other Southwest Key shelters in Arizona. In July, Phoenix police arrested Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, on suspicion of molesting a 14-year-old girl at a Southwest Key facility. Negrete is accused of kissing the girl multiple times and touching her breasts and crotch over her clothes in the bedroom she shared with two other minors. One of the teen’s roommates reported the allegations to police.
At the non-profit’s Mesa shelter, worker Levian Pacheco is alleged to have performed oral sex on two teen boys and attempted to force one of them to penetrate him anally. Six other teens accused him of touching them sexually. The allegations span an 11-month period, starting in August 2016, and often involved situations in which Pacheco was alone with the boys in bedrooms or bathrooms, according to court documents.
A federal jury convicted Pacheco last month of seven counts of abusive sexual contact and three counts of sexual abuse. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 3.