Government waived FBI checks on staff
More than 2,300 are at facility in Texas being run by a nonprofit
The Trump administration has put the safety of thousands of teens at a migrant detention camp at risk by waiving FBI fingerprint checks for their caregivers and short-staffing mental health workers, according to an Associated Press investigation and a new federal watchdog report.
None of the 2,100 staff members at a tent city holding more than 2,300 teens in the remote Texas desert are going through rigorous FBI fingerprint background checks, according to a Health and Human Services inspector general memo published Tuesday.
“Instead, Tornillo is using checks conducted by a private contractor that has access to less comprehensive data, there-
by heightening the risk that an individual with a criminal history could have direct access to children,” the memo says.
In addition, the federal government is allowing the nonprofit running the facility — BCFS Health and Human Services — to sidestep mental health care requirements. Under federal policy, migrant youth shelters generally must have one mental health clinician for every 12 kids, but the federal agency’s contract with BCFS allows it to staff Tornillo with just one clinician for every 100 children. That’s not enough to provide adequate mental health care, the inspector general office said in the memo.
BCFS acknowledged to The Associated Press that it currently has one mental health clinician for every 50 children at Tornillo.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Tuesday that overriding background checks is “absolutely appalling” and called for the immediate shutdown of the shelter.
The Trump administration announced in June it would open a temporary shelter for up to 360 migrant children in this isolated corner of Texas. Fewer than six months later, the facility has expanded into a detention camp holding thousands of teenagers — and it shows every sign of becoming more permanent.
By Tuesday, 2,324 mostly Central American boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were sleeping inside the highly guarded facility in rows of bunk beds in canvas tents, some of which once housed first responders to Hurricane Harvey. More than 1,300 teens have arrived since the end of October alone.
Rising from the cotton fields and dusty roads not far from the dark fence marking the U.S.-Mexico border, the camp has rows of beige tents and golf carts that ferry staffers carrying walkie-talkies. Teens with identical haircuts and government-issued shirts and pants can be seen walking single file, flanked by staff at the front and back.
More people are detained in Tornillo’s tent city than in all but one of the nation’s 204 federal prisons, yet construction continues.
The camp’s population may grow even more if migrants in the caravans castigated by President Donald Trump enter the U.S.
Federal officials have said they may send teens from the caravans to Tornillo, according to a nonprofit social service provider who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to publicly discuss the matter.
An Associated Press investigation has found that the camp’s rapid growth has created serious problems, including costs that appear to be soaring more than 50 percent higher than the government has disclosed. What began as an emergency, 30-day shelter has transformed into a vast tent city that could cost taxpayers more than $430 million.
Federal plans to close Tornillo by New Year’s Eve will be nearly impossible to meet. There aren’t 2,300 extra beds in other facilities, and a contract obtained by The Associated Press shows the project could continue into 2020. Planned closures have already been extended three times since this past summer.
The teens at Tornillo weren’t separated from their families at the border this past summer, but they’re held by the government because federal immigration policies have resulted in the detention of a record 14,000 migrant children, filling shelter beds across the country to capacity. Almost all the teens at Tornillo came on their own hoping to join family members in the U.S.