Following a number of horrific allegations from migrant children recently reunited with their families, the Health and Human Services’ (HHS) inspector general and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services “have each opened a probe of Casa Guadalupe, a shelter in the Chicago suburbs run by the nonprofit Heartland Alliance,” The Washington Post reports.
Earlier this month, the group of children spoke out about their detention in facilities contracted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), including Casa Guadalupe, alleging that they were forced to clean toilets without protective gloves, were threatened with having their blankets taken away if their cleaning was not satisfactory, and two children saw a distraught boy named Adonias being forcibly drugged.
Both Diego and Diogo said that during classes given to detained children, “a troubled” Adonias was “repeatedly injected with something that made him fall asleep at his desk. The boy’s father had been deported, Diego said, and he often melted down during the daily classes.” Diego said that he “was very scared. I thought they were going to inject me, too.”
Within days of the report, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois was calling for answers. “I am distressed at the allegations made by children in The Washington Post article,” he wrote in a letter to Heartland Alliance, which runs Casa Guadalupe, “and request that you notify me as soon as possible whether these accounts are accurate, what steps Heartland will take to hold the alleged perpetrators accountable, and how Heartland will work to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
“In June—at Durbin and 40 other Democratic Senators’ request—the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) opened an investigation into implementation of the family separation policy,” Durbin’s office added. In addition to the letter to Heartland Alliance, Durbin also “sent a follow up letter to the HHS OIG specifically asking that the OIG investigation look into concerning allegations leveled against Casa Guadalupe.”
As officials struggle to reunite thousands of children who were kidnapped from the arms of parents at the border, the administration faces a slew of lawsuits over the barbaric family separation policy, alleging filthy conditions, unsanitary drinking water, and food “not fit for consumption.” In Casa Guadalupe’s case, “an 11-year-old boy from Guatemala claimed he had been roughly dragged off a soccer field,” while a “10-year-old from Brazil said he had been denied medical attention after breaking his arm.”
“The safety of children under our care is our foremost concern,” said Heartland Alliance spokesperson Barbara Hoffman. “Our trained child-care staff, clinicians, and social workers follow extensive policies, procedures, and standards of care that guide our trauma-informed approach to ensure the safety and well-being of all children in our care. We take any concerns about our program extremely seriously and appropriately report, investigate, and address each matter that comes to our attention.”
Amy Maldonado, the attorney for Adonias, “said Heartland Alliance appeared to be taking the allegations seriously, including reviewing surveillance footage from inside the shelter.” But as Jesse Bless, the attorney for Diego and Diogo said, “the investigation should extend to the government forces whose actions allowed this to happen.”
“The abuse reported” by families “is criminal,” tweeted David Leopold, an attorney and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “We must demand a no-bullshit top to bottom investigation of” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “the perpetrators, from the WH on down to the rank and file thugs meting out the abuse in the child prisons, must be held to account.”
That includes DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen, who lied and tried to claim the family separation policy didn’t exist in the first place (guess those separated kids came out of nowhere); HHS Sec. Alex Azar (who lied and claimed that HHS could locate children in its care ‘within seconds,’ when in reality the administration has had to DNA test kids); Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III; White House aide and white supremacist Stephen Miller; and, of course, Donald Trump.
“Children separated from their families at our Southern border as a result of President Trump’s unlawful and heartless policy have already endured far more trauma than any child should ever be forced to endure,” Durbin continued in his letter. “Every effort must be made to ensure that, once in the care of HHS grantees like Heartland, these children are compassionately cared for—both physically and emotionally.”