Starting a new thread as the previous is over a year old.
I don't care which administration appears to have subcontractors in charge of neglecting or abusing migrant children. There is no excuse for it taking place. Glad this is getting addressed but I am stunned we are still having this horrible conversation.
Children housed in one of the Biden administration's largest shelters for unaccompanied migrant minors were being watched over by contractors with no Spanish-language skills or experience in child care who usually stood idly at the edge of crowded tents, according to two federal workers who have come forward to file a whistle blower complaint to Congress.
The contractor for the Department of Health and Human Services, Servpro, specializes in cleanup after water, fire and storm disasters. It shows no record of having handled a contract related to child welfare before it took on the care of nearly 5,000 children who were housed at a facility in Fort Bliss, TX in May.
Elkin and Mulaire are represented by the Government Accountability Project, which filed the complaint on their behalf. The whistleblowers' attorneys said that "the conditions they witnessed caused physical, mental and emotional harm affecting dozens of children" and that management at Fort Bliss ignored their concerns. The complaint does not allege illegal behavior, but rather gross mismanagement and a threat to public health and safety.
The Servpro supervisors were responsible for overseeing large tents, at the time filled with 1,000 to 1,500 children, according to Elkin and Mulaire, where "they did not initiate interaction with the children and generally simply stood quietly, passively watching the children."
They said many of the contractors from Servpro viewed the job "more as crowd control than youth care" and documented that they used loud music and, at one point, a bullhorn to wake children in the morning. Mulaire said the ratio of federal detailees to Servpro employees in the boys' tent he supervised was about 1 to 6 by the time he left in June.
The Servpro contractors are alleged to have told Elkin and Mulaire that none of the tent supervisors were to interact with the children "unless a child specifically approached them." But Elkin and Mulaire said that children in acute mental or medical distress were less likely to seek help and that, when they did, contractors questioned why the children needed the attention.
Elkin and Mulaire said that children's days were largely unstructured and that they passed the time "either sitting or lying in their beds or milling around with relatively few activities available to them."