The Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued Texas-based nonprofit Southwest Key Programs over its employees sexually abusing and harassing unaccompanied migrant children in its shelters.
Southwest Key, which operates eight shelters in Arizona, ran a lucrative business in providing shelter to refugees with hefty federal backing. The nonprofit has received over $5.6 billion in grants since 2003 from the Department of Health & Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In a press release put out on Thursday, the DOJ cited the Fair Housing Act as the basis of its lawsuit. The DOJ alleged that Southwest Key employees abused children from 2015 through last year, at the very least, and that the nonprofit failed to consistently follow federal requirements for preventing, detecting, reporting the abuse, as well as failed to take action and discouraged children from disclosing sexual harassment.
The DOJ in its lawsuit seeks monetary damages to compensate the alleged victims of sexual abuse and harassment. Essentially, the funds would be the return of what were federal funds to begin with, and likely just a portion of them at that.
The Arizona Daily Independent has reported on Southwest Key for over a decade. The Arizona Daily Independent’s cofounder and longtime contributor, Loretta Hunnicutt, notably cited concerns for the refugee minors back in 2014 — long before this recent DOJ lawsuit.
On the basis of those concerns, Hunnicutt met with various officials on all levels of government in Arizona urging action. Each time she was met with indifference or outright contempt for the minors.
Frustrated, Hunnicutt met with former Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas in 2015 to ask that Southwest Key be directed to remove the fencing around their shelters in accordance with ORR policy, which prohibits fencing around the places where refugees reside.
Fenced in by an organization paid billions to house them, America’s youngest refugees have had no escape. Douglas declined.
In December 2015, the Arizona Daily Independent reported on former Southwest Key employee whistleblowers who testified to running a corrupt, prison-like environment.
In response, then-Arizona State Rep. Bob Thorpe, who chaired the House Federalism, Property Rights and Public Policy Committee, called for an investigation into the Southwest Key facilities under contract by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
According to the former employees, children were viewed as commodities. Under the constant directive of keeping costs down, staff were directed to ignore children’s complaints of hunger, to give the children only a quarter-sized dollop of soap for bathing, and to give one child’s underwear to be reused for another.
These employees also revealed that they were directed to remain quiet when they believed the children were given to non-family, or when suspected criminals were processed and released into the community under the guise of being minors in need of shelter.
A whistleblower who dared report a minor claiming allegiance to the Mexican mafia and an intent to be delivered in a Phoenix-area drug family was reprimanded.
Resource issues were allegedly a carefully-guarded secret with Southwest Key. Three whistleblowers told ADI that management didn’t disclose to staff when the entire medical staff left the Tucson facility, a reality only discovered after a lice outbreak occurred.
In 2018, reports of molestation and both sexual and physical abuse began to surface. The organization failed to meet a deadline to submit proof of employees background checks. Southwest Keys’ founder, Juan Sanchez, dismissed the deadline error as a “very small, minor thing.”
Sanchez paid himself and his wife over a million annually. Other top executives to the nonprofit likewise earned salaries of over a million or in the high six-figures.
Sanchez stepped down from his CEO position in 2019.
The DOJ is currently seeking the testimony of additional Southwest Key victims or witnesses. They may contact the DOJ tip line at 1-833-591-0291.
