Irregularities abound at Texas migrant detention center

Olivia Lopez thought she’d be working with migrant mothers and children in a group-home setting when hired as a social worker at a Texas family detention center.

But when she arrived at the concrete facility and the doors were unlocked to let her in, she was startled by the cacophony of cell doors clanging.

“I walked in and thought, ‘Oh my Lord, this is really a prison,’” she said.

In an exclusive interview with McClatchy, the parent company of the Star-Telegram, Lopez shared an inside perspective of troubling operations at the Karnes County Residential Center, which has been at the center of controversy over the Obama administration’s family detention policy. She described a facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents.

The facility is operated by the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, Boca Raton, Fla.,-based GEO Group, and overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Lopez’s story is a troubling counter-narrative to the accounts given by federal officials and company representatives who describe the facility as a safe and comfortable place where mothers and children can stay during their asylum proceedings.

There is state-of-the-art medical equipment, yoga for the moms and soccer and video games for the children. But Lopez said nothing changes the fact that the children were locked up and under the threat of being deported at any moment. She met a 3-year-old who regressed to breastfeeding and a 5-year-old girl who was wearing diapers.

“It might look like they’re having fun playing soccer, but that’s certainly not the narrative of their lives,” she said. “They know where they’re at. They know they’re in a prison. They know they can’t leave.”

The Obama administration this month began to release hundreds of migrant mothers and children — some of whom had been locked up more than a year — under intense congressional and media scrutiny.

Approximately 1,700 parents and children continued to reside in three family detention centers in Karnes and Dilley and in Berks County, Pa.

Geo officials did not address Lopez’s specific charges, but said they “strongly refuted” the allegations. Spokesman Pablo Paez declined an interview request, but said in an email to McClatchy that the facility provides “high-quality care in a safe, clean and family-friendly environment.”

He noted the Karnes facility operates under the guidance of on-site ICE officials and cited a Homeland Security inspector general report that found no evidence of sexual abuse and harassment at the Karnes center.

While announcing the end of long-term detention, ICE officials emphasize that they will continue to place families at the facilities, which they describe as an “effective and humane alternative” and a way to keep families together as they go through immigration proceedings. Spokeswoman Nina Pruneda, while declining to answer specific questions, said in a statement that the facilities include medical care, play rooms, social workers, educational services and access to legal counsel.

“ICE takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care,” she said. “The agency is committed to ensuring that individuals housed in our family residential centers receive timely and appropriate medical health care.”

Lopez’s account

But Lopez’s account corroborates allegations made by many past and current detainees who reported threatening treatment and being placed in isolation for speaking out and separated from their children.

When she was hired in October, Lopez, 57, saw working at Karnes as a dream opportunity. She has been passionate about immigrant rights for decades.

It was not her expertise that company officials sought, she said. They hired her to help give the appearance of a well-supported medical unit, she said.

Several initiatives she launched were met with fierce opposition, she said, including establishing an open-door policy for detainees, sharing with them geographic information about where the facility was and improving documentation of the mothers’ care and concerns.

“Social work is different here,” she said she was told.

If a mother expressed a problem, the only thing she could write was that the detainee asked and was informed about how to access services.

The real goal, she soon learned, was a clean paper trail. The facility was often the subject of audits of various agencies and organizations. The company didn’t want any evidence that could draw more attention, she said.

“If a document is clean, there aren’t any follow-ups,” she said. “The audit stops at the document.”

But she did write down what she learned, albeit in a personal notebook. In a Dec. 22 entry in the yellow notebook, she wrote a directive from her boss regarding the government agency. “ICE: We don’t tell them anything.”

This story was originally published July 27, 2015 at 12:43 PM with the headline "Irregularities abound at Texas migrant detention center."