What could ever go wrong here? As the Trump administration has a record number of migrant kids in custody, a government watchdog memo reportedly shows Scott Lloyd, anti-abortion extremist and former director of the office tasked with “housing” these kids, “waived rigorous background checks for all staff” at Tornillo, the prison camp that is now detaining more than 2,300 children.
”The memo, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, says the former director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement personally signed off on sidestepping requirements for child abuse and neglect checks at the tent city in Tornillo, Texas. None of the 2,100 staff has gone through FBI fingerprint checks either, but the Tornillo contractor says staff are vetted in other ways.”
About that: Two child detention facilities in Arizona, run by “non-profit” Southwest Key thanks to a lucrative government contract worth more than $400 million, were recently forced to give up their licenses and pay a $73,000 fine after failing to provide fingerprint records for some employees. Within the past several months, numerous Southwest Key employees have been arrested and charged with sexually abusing migrant minors.
And at the same time, the Trump administration has instead increased vetting procedures not for staffers caring for vulnerable kids, but for potential sponsors, including FBI fingerprints. Dozens were then arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), leading other potential sponsors to be frightened away, and leading to more kids being detained in horror shows like Tornillo, which holds unaccompanied minors, or children who came here alone.
Additionally, “the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General memo confirms AP’s reporting that teens held at Tornillo are receiving inadequate mental health care.” This is intentional, state-sanctioned child abuse. Free the children—now.
