A 32-year-old worker at a migrant children’s facility in Arizona has been arrested and charged with molesting a 14-year-old detained girl, “accused of slipping into the girl's room late at night and forcibly kissing and inappropriately touching her, according to court documents,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Southwest Key, which runs the facility, said Fernando Magaz Negrete had been fired but didn’t address if the girl was one of the thousands of migrant children kidnapped from their parents at the U.S./Mexico border. This is also the same facility that Melania Trump visited in a publicity stunt last June, following her husband facing universal condemnation of his barbaric “zero tolerance” policy.
According to the report, “police said Magaz Negrete admitted to kissing the girl and touching her vagina over her clothing when police questioned him at his residence.” Two other girls who shared the room with the 14-year-old witnessed the abuse, and surveillance footage “captured Magaz Negrete approaching the girls' bedroom several times between 9 and 10:30 on the night of June 27, according to the probable cause statement.”
“When a child tells us of inappropriate behavior,” said Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller, “we immediately call law enforcement and start an internal investigation as appropriate. That’s what happened in this case. Southwest Key always works with law enforcement to bring the full force of the law to bear when it is warranted.”
But Southwest Key, which runs facilities across three states, has already been under fire for deplorable and secretive conditions. Earlier this year, a disturbing report from Reveal and The Texas Tribune revealed that state inspectors found nearly 250 violations in its facilities, “including rotten bananas and shampoo dispensers filled with hand sanitizer.” In one instance, a Southwest Key employee showed up to work drunk. “A drug test later found he was over the legal alcohol limit to drive.”
Southwest Key also barred U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley from entering a facility in Texas, even calling the police and kicking him off the property like he was some sort of nuisance. “American citizens are funding this operation,” Merkley said during the June visit, “so every American citizen has a stake in how these children are being treated and how this policy is being enacted.”
Yet, the Trump administration continues to detain hundreds of separated migrant kids, because this unfit administration has decided that some parents are unfit to get their own kids back, while other parents have already been deported. Every day separated is another day of trauma—and another day of state-sanctioned child abuse. It’s not just abusive employees who are the thugs and criminals, it’s also the administration that locked up these children in the first place.
