“To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable,” said attorney Fisher Flores, who is representing the family. “Children deserve safety and they belong with their parents.”
A recently-filed lawsuit claims that a 3-year-old year girl suffered sexual abuse after being separated from her mother by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
According to The Associated Press, the girl’s father is a U.S. permanent resident. Speaking to reporters, he said he spent more than five months waiting for his daughter to be released from federal custody after her and her mother were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. He was only informed that his daughter had been abused after initiating legal action against the government.
“She was so long in there,” the father told The Associated Press. “I just think if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.”
After being detained along with her mother, the three-year-old girl was given to a foster family, with whom she remained for several months; she was allegedly abused while in their custody.
The girl’s father says that his daughter spent months in foster care simply because the government told him it couldn’t make an appointment to take his fingerprints and confirm his identity. In the interim, attorneys for the family say, the girl was allegedly abused by an older child staying with her in foster care in Harlingen, Texas.
While with the foster family, a caregiver noticed that the child’s underwear was on backwards. The girl, lawyers say, then told the caregiver that she had been abused multiple times and that the abuse had caused her to bleed.
The Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement told the girl’s father that there had been an “accident” and that his daughter would be examined.
“I asked them, ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they told just told me that they couldn’t give me more information, that it was under investigation,” he told The Associated Press.
Investigators performed a forensic examination and an interview. The father wasn’t told of the outcome, but the older child accused of abuse was thereafter removed from the program. The abuse allegations were also reported to local law enforcement.
“To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable,” said attorney Fisher Flores, who is representing the family. “Children deserve safety and they belong with their parents.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement and its parent agent, the Department of Health and Human Services, are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
The family’s lawyers note that they sent the government a letter in February; this letter prompted action, allowing the father to receive appointments for fingerprinting, a background check, and a DNA test. However, the Office of Refugee Resettlement again delayed, triggering a further round of legal action. Only after a habeas corpus petition was filed in federal court was the girl released to her father.
“Increasingly, we have to turn to the federal courts to challenge these harmful legal violations and demand that children be released,” Flores said.
Laura Peña, director of the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project in South Texas, made a similar observation while speaking to Noticias Telemundo.
“We had to file a lawsuit in federal court because the government kept saying, ‘Oh, there’s this requirement, and that requirement—which is fine—but then the government says, ‘There are no appointments available,’” Peña said, as reported by NBC News. “Well, then, what are you supposed to do?”
The Associated Press notes the father was not aware that the “accident” he had been told about was sexual abuse until the lawsuit was already being prepared.
The Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project said that there are laws and processes in place to protect unaccompanied minors, but “more and more children are being made to stay longer in federal immigration custody, even when they have a loving parent ready to care for them.”
Sources
3-year-old immigrant suffered alleged sexual abuse during months in federal custody, family says
3-year-old immigrant was sexually abused in federal custody, lawsuit alleges
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