At the 3:38 minute mark, this is a must-listen to whistleblower account by Antar Davidson, who provides an insider perspective of the trauma to which the jailed children—some as young as 5 years old—have been subjected. Excuse me, the kids can't even hug each other?! And they had to sleep on the floor?!
All of this took place at the Tucson location of Southwest Key. They have several locations throughout the country, including the Casa Padre location in Brownsville, Texas, at the state's most southern tip.
This is a horrific narrative of "tired, under-trained staff" that purportedly treat these already traumatized children in a verbally abusive manner.
Southwest Key clearly has lacked capacity to address this humanitarian crisis of family separation resulting in the abuse recounted here.
Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman may have the most in-depth interview of Antar Davidson whose agonizing narrative transports the listener inside the facility at the point of contact with three traumatized siblings.
In this interview, Davidson shares how CEO Juan Sanchez asks staff to contribute from their $15.00 per hour salaries to make up for additional costs that imprisoning kids means for the nonprofit.
Such gall! Sanchez is a millionaire! Prior to this, he was already in the "accompanied minors business," taking our hard-earned taxpayer dollars from the federal government's Office of Refugee Settlement to mete out this injustice. Then came Jeff Sessions' "Zero-Tolerance" policy issued on April 6, 2018 that brought—and continues to bring—chaos, anguish, and unspeakable treatment and suffering that has the country in an uproar—except, of course, for Trump's cold, callous base.
As you can read from this story from USA Today titled, Housing immigrant kids is big business for a non-profit paying its CEO nearly $1.5 million, this business is massively, if disgustingly, profitable.
Antar is actually all over the Internet and one learns a little bit more of this dreadful tale from each narration. For example, this piece in Mother Jones titled, "I Worked at a Child Migrant Center. What I Was Told to Do Was So Inhumane That I Quit where he elaborates a bit more on the personal trauma and distress that he experienced.
Juan Sanchez is an Austinite, by the way, and he also runs a charter school here locally by the same name. Terrible optic. If I were a parent of a child in his charter school—yet another business that siphons precious tax dollars from the public—I would take them out.
Juan Sanchez likes to think of himself and Southwest Key as the "good guys" in this story.
This self-serving rationalization might only make sense if we think of evil as on a continuum with him being "less evil" or even a "victim" himself. Pobrecito! Poor guy!
Yeah, right. Rationalize all you want, Juan Sanchez. Like Antar Davidson, it could have made a massive difference for these children and their families if you yourself would have been a conscientious objector to draconian White House, obviously bigoted and hateful, policy.
I guess you, like Donald and Melania, can sleep well at night.
With parents in anguish...and their children who suffer beyond measure.
Angela Valenzuela
c/s
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