TORNILLO, Texas — The Trump administration has put the safety of thousands of teens at a migrant detention camp at risk by waiving FBI fingerprint checks for their caregivers and short-staffing mental health workers, according to an Associated Press investigation and a new federal watchdog report.
None of the 2,100 staffers at a tent city holding more than 2,300 teens in the remote Texas desert are going through rigorous FBI fingerprint background checks, according to a Health and Human Services inspector general memo published Tuesday.
“Instead, Tornillo is using checks conducted by a private contractor that has access to less comprehensive data, thereby heightening the risk that an individual with a criminal history could have direct access to children,” the memo says.
In addition, the federal government is allowing the nonprofit running the facility — BCFS Health and Human Services — to sidestep mental health care requirements. Under federal policy, migrant youth shelters generally must have one mental health clinician for every 12 kids, but the federal agency’s contract with BCFS allows it to staff Tornillo with just one clinician for every 100 children. Thatap not enough to provide adequate mental health care, the inspector general office said in the memo.
BCFS acknowledged to the AP that it currently has one mental health clinician for every 50 children at Tornillo.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said Tuesday that overriding background checks is “absolutely appalling” and called for the immediate shutdown of the shelter.
The Trump administration announced in June it would open a temporary shelter for up to 360 migrant children in this isolated corner of Texas. Fewer than six months later, the facility has expanded into a detention camp holding thousands of teenagers — and it shows every sign of becoming more permanent.
By Tuesday, 2,324 mostly Central American boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were sleeping inside the highly guarded facility in rows of bunk beds in canvas tents, some of which once housed first responders to Hurricane Harvey. More than 1,300 teens have arrived since the end of October alone.
Rising from the cotton fields and dusty roads not far from the dark fence marking the U.S.-Mexico border, the camp has rows of beige tents and golf carts that ferry staffers carrying walkie-talkies. Teens with identical haircuts and government-issued shirts and pants can be seen walking single file, flanked by staff at the front and back.
More people are detained in Tornillo’s tent city than in all but one of the nation’s 204 federal prisons, yet construction continues.
The camp’s population may grow even more if migrants in the caravans castigated by President Donald Trump enter the U.S. Federal officials have said they may send teens from the caravans to Tornillo, according to a nonprofit social service provider who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to publicly discuss the matter.
An AP investigation has found that the camp’s rapid growth has created serious problems, including costs that appear to be soaring more than 50 percent higher than the government has disclosed. What began as an emergency, 30-day shelter has transformed into a vast tent city that could cost taxpayers more than $430 million.
Federal plans to close Tornillo by New Years’ Eve will be nearly impossible to meet. There aren’t 2,300 extra beds in other facilities and a contract obtained by AP shows the project could continue into 2020. Planned closures have already been extended three times since this summer.
The teens at Tornillo weren’t separated from their families at the border this summer, but they’re held by the government because federal immigration policies have resulted in the detention of a record 14,000 migrant children, filling shelter beds around the country to capacity. Almost all the teens at Tornillo came on their own hoping to join family members in the United States.
Some children have been detained at Tornillo since the tent camp opened in June. As the population inside the tall wire fences swells, the young detainees’ anguish has deepened.
“The few times they let me call my mom I would tell her that one day I would be free, but really I felt like I would be there for the rest of my life,” a 17-year-old from Honduras who was held at Tornillo earlier this year told AP. “I feel so bad for the kids who are still there. What if they have to spend Christmas there? They need a hug, and nobody is allowed to hug there.”
After his family passed extensive background checks, the teen was recently released to them, but said he still has nightmares he’s back inside. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from immigration authorities.
Confining and caring for so many children is a challenge. By day, minders walk the teens to their meals, showers and recreation. At night the area around the camp, thatap grown from a few dozen to more than 150 tents, is secured and lit up by flood lights.
The nonprofit social service agency contracted to run Tornillo says it is proud of its work. It says it is operating the facility with the same precision and care used for shelters put up after natural disasters.
“We don’t have anything to hide. This is an exceptionally run operation,” said Krista Piferrer, a spokeswoman for BCFS Health and Human Services. “This isn’t our first rodeo.”
She said they have no guidance from the Trump administration regarding what will happen after Dec. 31.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mark Weber, said no decisions have been made about whether Tornillo will close by year’s end as scheduled.
“Whatever it is we decide to do, in the very near future, we’ll do a public notice about that,” he said.
Failing to properly check staffers’ backgrounds “can lead to potential abuse and neglect of these kids,” said Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Since the facility opened, BCFS has been checking job candidates’ national and local criminal histories and doing multi-state sex offender registry checks, the nonprofitap spokesperson, Piferrer, said.
BCFS has filed more than 30 reports on “significant incidents” at Tornillo since June, some involving interactions between children and staff, but none of a sexual nature, Piferrer said.
Jeffrey Harp, a retired FBI assistant special agent in charge, told the AP that FBI fingerprint background checks can be completed in a few minutes and reveal much more information about job candidates than checks that simply run a person’s name against criminal history databases.
“How do you know the person is who they say they are unless you do a fingerprint check? They can’t lie about their fingerprints, but they can lie about their name or take on someone else’s identity who has a crystal clean record,” Harp said.
