More than a year after they were forcibly separated at the southern border by the Trump administration, an asylum seeker is suing the two facilities where his 10-year-old son was held, alleging that the child was physically abused and forcibly drugged. When the boy was sexually assaulted by another child, the lawsuit states, “he was viewed as a potential liability, and quickly deported.”
Immigration officials separated “J.E.B.” and 10-year-old “F.C.B.” in February 2018, before the official implementation of the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy. The boy was first placed in an Arizona facility operated by Southwest Key, where the lawsuit says he was physically abused. He was then moved to the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas. The abuse only escalated from there, the lawsuit states.
“At the Texas facility, the lawsuit alleges the boy ‘was dosed with powerful psychotropic drugs without parental consent.’” CNN reports. F.C.B repeatedly asked to go home, but “there was no serious consideration of discharge,’ the lawsuit says, arguing the boy was ‘viewed as an asset’ by Shiloh because the facility was paid daily for holding him in custody.” It was only after F.C.B. was sexually abused that he was allowed to leave—so he could be deported.
Both facilities already have a horrific track record. Mired in scandals, top Southwest Key executives, including its CEO, recently resigned from the “non-profit,” which has received anywhere from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion in federal contracts to detain migrant kids over the past 10 years. Shiloh has a long history of forcibly drugging children, “often on the basis of apparently deliberate misdiagnoses,” Daily Kos’s Rebecca Pilar Buckwalter Poza reported last year.
“Both the boy and his father were deported last year, according to the lawsuit, which seeks damages for the pain, emotional distress and medical expenses they've allegedly suffered,” CNN continued. Children do not belong in detention, period. A federal judge eventually ordered Shiloh staff to get consent from parents “before giving psychotropic drugs to any detained migrant child,” but Shiloh still appears to be operating, as is Southwest Key.