If you're a teenager from Mexico, or Honduras, or Guatemala, and you slip across the border by yourself in search of work, you become an unaccompanied minor headed for detention if you're caught. And then what happens? Well, then you become the victim of one of those private contractors hired by the administration to do the government's job. The Houston Chronicle/AP reports.
...Teens from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Cuba were being held at the San Antonio facility run by Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. under a contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Undocumented minors caught by authorities in the United States fall under the care of ORR while their immigration cases are decided.
But Susan Watson, an attorney for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, said the teens were beaten and subjected to other excessive force in violation of their constitutional rights.
At least one teen was knocked unconscious, but complaints to facility administrators were ignored, according to the lawsuit.Officials at Cornell also denied the teens access to attorneys by unnecessarily transferring them to other facilities before scheduled lawyer meetings, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit names Cornell and 15 employees along with three employees of ORR. It does not name ORR itself because the teens have not filed or exhausted their administrative claims against the agency, a requirement that must be fulfilled before the federal government can be sued.
The administration obviously wishes these cases wouldn't hit the news, wouldn't reach up and slap us in the face reminding us that "stuff happens" in the lucrative world of private contractors. This is no Abu Ghraib, but it's another heads-up. Or do illegal immigrants of all ages simply deserve what they get?
