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Shelter provider accused of “pervasive” sexual abuse of migrant children in U.S. custody
The Justice Department this week accused the largest provider of shelters for migrant children in U.S. custody of engaging in “severe” and “pervasive” sexual abuse of minors in its government-funded facilities.
In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday and announced on Thursday, the Justice Department accused employees of Southwest Key, a Texas-based organization, of sexually abusing and harassing unaccompanied migrant children in shelters operated by the nonprofit since at least 2015.
Multiple Southwest Key shelter employees, the lawsuit alleged, have raped, sexually abused, sexually harrased and inappropriately touched children in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for migrant minors who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents. The Justice Department also accused Southwest Key employees of soliciting sex acts and nude photos from young migrants and of engaging in inappropriate relationships with them.
The Justice Department said there are more than 100 reports of “unlawful sexual abuse or harrasment” of children housed by Southwest Key. Some employees, the department added, have been criminally prosecuted.
“Since at least 2015, multiple Southwest Key employees — including supervisory and non-supervisory employees — have subjected children living at Southwest Key shelter care homes to severe, pervasive, and unwelcome sexual abuse and harassment,” the Justice Department said in its 26-page lawsuit.
The Justice Department said Southwest Key failed to take adequate steps to protect children in its care from being victimized, and discouraged them from reporting sexual abuse or harrasment. The department asked a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to impose civil penalties on Southwest Key and to force the organization to pay reparations to victims. It also requested an order to require Southwest Key to take actions to stop sexual abuse in its facilities.
LOREN ELLIOTT/AFP via Getty Images
In a statement to CBS News, Southwest Key said its “primary focus is the safety, health, and well-being of each one of the children and youth we care for.”
“We continue to review the complaint, and it does not present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children,” Southwest Key said.
“We are in constant communication and continue to closely partner with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as we have done so for the past two decades to ensure the children and youth entrusted to our care are safe with us during their short stay with Southwest Key,” the organization added.
Asked whether HHS would discontinue using Southwest Key as a shelter provider, an agency spokesperson said they could not comment due to pending litigation.
In a statement included in the Justice Department’s announcement, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said his agency would “continue to closely evaluate our assignment of children into care-giving programs to ensure the safety and well-being of every child” in its custody.
“The U.S. Department of Justice’s complaint against Southwest Key raises serious pattern or practice concerns. HHS will continue to work with the Justice Department and oversight agencies to hold its care-giving programs like Southwest Key accountable,” Becerra said.
Between fiscal years 2015 and 2023 — the timespan that the lawsuit covered — Southwest Key received more than $3 billion from HHS to house migrant children, the Justice Department said. Southwest Key has 29 shelters in Arizona, California and Texas with the capacity to house more than 6,000 children.
Unaccompanied children who are not from Mexico are processed differently than other migrants by U.S. immigration officials at the southern border. A 2008 anti-trafficking law protects them from being deported quickly and allows them to stay in the U.S. while their immigration cases are reviewed.
That 2008 law, passed with bipartisan support, charges HHS with caring for unaccompanied migrant children until they turn 18 or are placed with U.S.-based sponsors, who are typically relatives.
U.S. border officials first started encountering unaccompanied children in large numbers in 2014 and have recorded several spikes in migrant child arrivals since then. In 2021 and 2022, the Biden administration processed record numbers of unaccompanied migrant children, at times struggling to find facilities to house them all.
In the past year, arrivals of unaccompanied minors along the southern border have declined.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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