The lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Texas, alleges a “pattern” of “severe or pervasive sexual harassment” going back to at least 2015 in the network of shelters run by the Austin, Texas-based non-profit Southwest Key, which contracts with the federal government to care for migrants arriving in the US without parents or legal guardians.
The complaint includes alleged cases of “severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos, entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, sexual comments and gestures.”
Southwest Key did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The justice department said Southwest Key failed to protect the children in its care and did not consistently follow federal requirements for preventing, detecting and reporting abuse.
In a 2022 case detailed in the complaint, a Southwest Key employee allegedly repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl, and an 11-year-old girl at Casa Franklin in El Paso, Texas. The eight-year-old girl said the employee threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse, the complaint alleges.
In another case, from 2020, an employee took a 15-year-old boy from Casa Kokopelli in Arizona to a hotel room for several days and paid him for sex acts. In both cases, the abuse was documented in Southwest Key’s own reports, according to the lawsuit.
“Sexual harassment of children in residential shelters, where a child should be safe and secure, is abusive, dehumanising and unlawful,” assistant attorney-general Kristen Clarke said in a statement on Thursday.
Southwest Key operates 29 shelters that provide temporary housing for unaccompanied children in Texas, Arizona and California, under grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Migrant children who arrive at the border unaccompanied are housed by the US government before being released to sponsors in the US, usually parents or close relatives.
There have been a record number of migrant crossings during the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat running for re-election against Republican former president Donald Trump who has made criticisms of Biden’s border policy a centre of his campaign. Since fiscal year 2021 through June of this year more than 500,000 unaccompanied minors have arrived at the US-Mexico border according to US government data.