By Sarah Posner, November 1, 2020, Mother Jones.
How taxpayer money might end up supporting “facilities that compromise the safety of children.”
Last year, in the wake of a surge of asylum seekers fleeing violence in Central America, the United States government held a record 69,550 immigrant children in government facilities. The vast majority of them arrived at the border without parents or guardians, though some were taken from their families during the Trump administration’s brutal family separation campaign. Lawyers, watchdogs, and journalists raised alarms about the multiple traumas faced by these children, including neglect, medical deprivation, and sexual abuse. 
Billions of taxpayer dollars have gone to organizations running shelters to house these unaccompanied children, who are required by law to be put in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours of being detained near the border. But poor federal oversight and new rules favoring conservative Christian providers mean that children could end up in shelters that actively impose their religious beliefs—and that have troubling records of improper and excessive discipline.
Over the past 15 months, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services has paid more than $87 million in taxpayer-funded grants to Sunny Glen Children’s Home in San Benito, Texas, to build and operate a 380-bed shelter for unaccompanied child migrants. Sunny Glen is a small group foster care home run by the Churches of Christ, a network of autonomous evangelical churches with an estimated 1.4 million congregants in the United States that in many cases teaches strict adherence to the New Testament, particularly with regard to gender roles. With a capacity for 40 children and 2018 revenues of just $2.5 million, Sunny Glen had never before received a federal grant; its total grant money for 2019 and 2020 was the second largest of 13 awards HHS made to organizations that hadn’t previously been funded by the unaccompanied minors residential shelter program.
...revealed 140 such deficiencies at Sunny Glen since 2016, including 17 after HHS first awarded its federal grant in July 2019. Thirty of Sunny Glen’s 140 citations were rated as high risk. Three of those high-risk deficiencies involved violation of a state standard prohibiting “restraints that obstruct child’s airway.” Four others involved other prohibited physical or corporal punishments, including slapping, shaking, holding down children’s heads, and pushing a child against a wall..
Comments (0)