HHS plays shell game with refugee children
First there were reports of child abuse; inadequate healthcare and education services. The kids hated it there. They called it el infierno.
Then in November federal investigators found the contractor running the camp hadn’t been conducting proper FBI fingerprint background checks for its employees working there. The camp released the last of its children January 11.
Remember those surveillance videos last month of staff members hitting and pushing children? That was Southwest Key, a charter school management company that last year scored over $600 million in federal contracts to detain refugee children. They’ve been cited over 200 times for violations at their 16 facilities and are currently under investigation by the Justice Department for paying their executives exorbitant salaries.
They closed two of their facilities last year, and are no longer accepting new children. I guess they figured the charter school industry is less hassle.
Thank goodness, right? Now all those kids can be reunited with their families.
Not so fast.
Last week Health and Human Services announced the juvenile interment camp in Homestead, Florida, will be almost doubling its capacity.
“The news that federal officials plan a significant expansion at the Homestead facility is a clear signal, immigration legal analysts say, that the […] administration is not changing its policy of holding migrant teenagers in detention, but is merely changing the location.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us...
You remember Homestead. That was where last June HHS blocked a sitting US senator and congresswoman from touring the facility.
DHS Secretary Nielsen has ignored Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s requests for clarification about the lack of certified teachers — the same DHS secretary who lied to Congress, saying there were never any plans for family separation a year after recently discovered internal memos prove otherwise.
Co-director of the immigration law clinic at UC Davis Holly Cooper says that Homestead suffers from the same problems as Tornillo. She told the New York Times, “We have received multiple complaints about the facility and will make the investigation of the conditions in Homestead a top priority for the coming month.”
Let me ask you something, Miami, a city that owes much of its success to the hard work of refugees. How much longer are we gonna put up with this cruelty — grounded in racism and greed — in our own backyard?
HHS plays shell game with refugee children - YouTube