Illegal immigrant children are getting guitar lessons, an organic vegetable farm, electronic gadgets and a petting farm at a housing facility funded by taxpayers.
The federal government is supplying these amenities to thousands of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border from Mexico, a senator’s inquiry has found.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has written to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell seeking an explanation for her decision to award a contract to Southwest Key Programs, a non-profit that has received $368 million from Washington in the past six years. Of this, $122 million came from the Health and Human Services Department for services that include housing immigrant children who arrived without parents.
Grassley wants details about a federal grant that funnels $316 a day to Southwest Key Programs for each unaccompanied minor at a housing facility in El Cajon, Calif., near San Diego. The overall cost of the El Cajon facility was not disclosed.
In his letter to Burwell, Grassley cites Southwest Key’s description of what it provides.
“We have an organic orchard of orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees, as well as an Organic (sic) garden that supplements our kitchen with a wide variety of organic vegetables throughout the year,” the description reads, adding, “We have a small petting farm with ducks, chickens, and miniature ponies. We have also established an Acuaponics system where we are cultivating over 1000 Tilapia.”
The federal grant pays Southwest Key to provide guitar lessons, classified as “vocational training.”
Grassley writes that the Southwest Key description casts doubt on Burwell’s testimony to the Senate this summer, in which she called for legislation to provide billions of dollars to house and care for the influx of unaccompanied minors, most of them from Central and South America.
“In your testimony just months after this grant was approved, you claimed that a large infusion of taxpayer dollars was necessary because, ‘… we don’t have enough beds and we don’t have sufficient resources to continue to add beds,’ ” Grassley wrote to Burwell. “It is disturbing that HHS is funding such expensive facilities despite claiming to be unable to meet basic needs for unaccompanied minors.”
The children at the facility are among thousands who have poured over the Texas border since last year and lawmakers have debated how to pay for their care as they await court hearings to determine whether they must be sent back to their home countries.
Southwest Key describes itself as a community-based youth and families program that operates detention centers and immigrant youth shelters, alternative schools and youth residential treatment centers.
At El Cajon, immigrant youth have access to a living room “equipped with all the modern gadgets for the educational and entertainment pleasure for the minors in our care,” and the courtyard decorations include “native flags of each individual that has been provided at our facility.”
The courtyard displays 42 flags, “under a beautiful ceiling that is painted blue with white clouds representing the sky.”
Southwest Key also supplies free legal services and a case manager to help children identify “relatives and/or appropriate sponsors in the United States.”
Congress has not passed legislation to spend additional money on immigrant housing.
The House passed a spending bill in July much smaller than the president’s request, but the Senate did not take it up, forcing the Obama administration to shuffle existing funds to cover the expense of the surge of immigrants.
Advocates for the immigrant children and families complain that they are being detained in facilities like prisons and are pushing for them to be released into the United States while they await hearings.
