6-year-old girl sexually abused in immigrant detention center forced to sign agreement about “responsibility”

If you think separating children from their parents and guardians was a low point in the horrors caused by Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy then strap in because the violation of innocent migrant children didn’t stop there. It was recently reported by The Nation that a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the policy was sexually abused at the Arizona detention facility she was sent to.

The girl, identified by initials D.L, and her mother were fleeing gang violence in Guatemala when they entered the Unites States at a point of entry in El Paso, Texas “where they presented Border Patrol authorities with paperwork claiming that they had “credible fear” that returning to Guatemala would result in harm.” D.L and her mother entered the US on May 24th and just two days later, the young girl was separated from her mother and sent a shelter outside of Phoenix called Case Glendale. The facility is run by Southwest Key, a company that we previously reported had made almost a billion dollars in the industry of sheltering migrant children and teenagers. Before D.L and her mother were separated, her mother provided border authorities with the number of D.L’s father, an undocumented immigrant who resided in California. On June 11th, D.L.’s father was contacted by the facility and informed that a boy had fondled his daughter and other girls.

According to family spokesperson Mark Lane, D.L.’s father was told not to worry, because Southwest Key was changing some of its protocols and such abuse would not happen again. (Lane was connected with D.L.’s family through Families Belong Together, a coalition of civil-rights groups formed in response to the recent border crackdown.) Lane says that D.L.’s father asked to speak with a social worker, but, despite promises from the facility, he never heard from one. – The Nation

According to a Southwest Key document obtained by The Nation, D.L.’s reported abuse took place on June 4th, 2018. Just one day after D.L.’s father was contacted, the 6-year-old was presented with a form stating that “as part of the facility’s intervention protocol, she had been instructed to “maintain my distance from the other youth involved” and had been provided “psychoeducation,” described in the document as “reporting abuse” and “good touch bad touch.” The form (below) shows a single “D” that is represents D.L.’s “signature” next to a characterization of her as “tender age” which is supposed to be confirmation that it was the responsibility of this 6-year-old victim to follow a safety protocol reviewed with her. This is a chilling example of the lengths the US government and government-funded organizations will go to in order to cover themselves for the obvious violations taking place under their watch. It seems that asking infants to testify in deportation cases was only the beginning of this heinous trend.

D.L.’s mother was still being detained in Texas when she received the news. Understandably, the mother was devastated by the news. “I felt really horrible. I couldn’t do anything for her, because we were separated. It was a nightmare. When my husband told me what happened, I felt helpless. She was so little, she was probably so scared, probably afraid to say anything to anyone. It was a total nightmare for me,” DL’s mother told The Nation through an interpreter. The torment didn’t stop there because on June 22nd, D.L.’s father was informed that same boy cited for his daughter’s abuse had hit and fondled her again. D.L.’s father had asked how the facility had let this happen again but was told that, that was only information they could release to him.

Earlier this year, the ACLU released a report, based on 30,000 pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that described hundreds of cases of abuse of immigrant children in US custody between 2009 and 2014. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement calling the report “unfounded and baseless.” – The Nation

Thanks to the work of Families Belong Together, the family has been reunited but the effects of D.L.’s trauma still linger. D.L, didn’t recognize her mother and her day-to-day habits still show signs of the conditioning she endured in the detention centers. It is difficult to articulate the devastation this family has had to endure but we cannot let stories like this get lost in the fray. Our current political climate introduces a “new normal” every day that endangers the lives and bodies of marginalized communities. Americans should not distance themselves from these kinds of human rights violations because this administration has showed us time and again that no one is safe, including U.S citizens.