A pair of whistleblowers who briefly worked at a Fort Bliss facility in El Paso, Texas, said they were instructed by top brass to “play down” a child migrant COVID-19 outbreak amid “gross mismanagement” of tent facilities housing hundreds of unaccompanied minors.
Arthur Pearlstein and Lauren Reinhold, identified as two “volunteer detailees at the Fort Bliss Emergency Intake Site” between April and June, said the Department of Health and Human Services instructed them and others to “make everything sound positive” and “play down anything negative” to the media. This came as at least 10 aircraft hangar-sized tents housing between 500 and 1,000 migrant children were plagued with a number of problems, including a rampant spread of COVID-19, according to a complaint from the Government Accountability Project released Wednesday.
The site is operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the HHS Department, charged with the care of migrant children awaiting immigration proceedings.
“COVID was widespread among children and eventually spread to many employees,” the complaint said. “Hundreds of children contracted COVID in the overcrowded conditions. Adequate masks were not consistently provided to children, nor was their use consistently enforced. Every effort was made to downplay the degree of COVID infection at the site, and the size of the outbreak was deliberately kept under wraps.”
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Pearlstein, a director at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and Reinhold, an attorney-adviser at the Social Security Administration, quoted a U.S. public health service manager as saying, “If that graph [of infections] is going to The Washington Post every day, it’s the only thing we’ll be dealing with, and politics will take over, perception will take over, and we’re about reality, not perception.”
The pair and others said they tried to voice concerns the ill children were wearing “basic disposable masks” instead of N-95 masks, but those complaints were “dismissed” by higher-ups. Migrant minors in the military installation also dealt with a lice outbreak, a problem also ignored by superiors, according to the complaint.
One of the biggest problems, according to Pearlstein and Reinhold, was the presence of major “depressive episodes.” In one instance, a few dozen children were told they could go home, only to be yanked from a bus after boarding to return to the camp.
“Major depression and depressive episodes were commonplace among the children,” the report read. “Mr. Pearlstein personally interviewed or worked with dozens of children who had symptoms of serious depression, including some who expressed suicidal thoughts. Many of his colleagues did as well.”
Male temporary residents in the tents, which were said to be “filthy” with “food” and “wet spots” on the floor, broke out into a riot in May, the complaint alleged.
“Toward the end of May, there were riots in some of the boys’ tents,” the whistleblowers said. “Ms. Reinhold witnessed security contractors surrounding a tent during one incident. Detailees were never briefed about the riots or trained how to act in the event a riot broke out.”
In another “disturbing” development, Reinhold said she witnessed construction workers “lewdly and loudly” gawking at what likely were underage migrant girls as they made their way to a meal tent.
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The housing at Fort Bliss was spearheaded by several private contractors, including Servpro, Chenega, which the Government Accountability Project railed against in a July 7 complaint. The group said the entities had little to no childcare experience and did not perform “competently or appropriately.”
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
