Nov. 27, 2018 / 9:02 PM GMT
By Daniella Silva
Staff at a Texas detention camp holding thousands of migrant children were not undergoing FBI fingerprint checks and the Trump administration waived stringent background check requirements for employees at the facility, a government watchdog memo said Tuesday.
The tent city in Tornillo, Texas, was not conducting FBI background checks for staff at the facility as of late September, the memorandum from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said Tuesday.
“Instead, Tornillo is using checks conducted by a private contractor that has access to less comprehensive data, thereby heightening the risk that an individual with a criminal history could have direct access to children,” the memo said.
The inspector general also said in the memo that the facility does not employ enough staff clinicians for the mental health care needs of the migrant children it houses.
The facility currently holds more than 2,300 migrant girls and boys, mostly ages 13 to 17, according to The Associated Press.
“This memorandum documents meetings with Administration for Children and Families staff at which alerted the agency to serious safety and health vulnerabilities at an influx care facility in Tornillo, Texas: the lack of FBI fingerprint background checks on its approximately 1,300 Tornillo staff and the dangerously low number of clinicians serving children,” Tesia Williams, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, said in a statement to NBC News.
“Both issues warrant immediate attention because they pose substantial risks to children receiving care at this facility,” Williams said.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement is part of the Administration for Children and Families, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The memo said the inspector general has since learned ORR was working with the facility to remedy the fingerprint check issue. It was unclear how many employees had since undergone the fingerprint checks.
The memo also said that the inspector general had learned the former director of the ORR had signed off on waiving child abuse and neglect checks requirements for incoming staff at the Tornillo facility in a June memorandum two days before the facility began operating.
The memo said the inspector general also found that as of Sept. 25, BCFS Health and Human Services, the nonprofit contracted to run the facility, was not conducting FBI fingerprint checks on its staff.
It also found that ORR was not aware that the fingerprint checks were not being done, the memo said, citing discussions with agency staff and senior management at the Tornillo facility.
The memo said that in later communication, the inspector general learned that ORR is now working with BCFS to secure completing the finger print checks for staff.
A spokesperson for BCFS Health and Human Services told the AP it was checking job candidates’ criminal histories and running sex offender registry checks.
“Those are pretty comprehensive,” spokeswoman Krista Piferrer told the AP. “Standing up the site, it’s no easy feat, but we know what right looks like.”
The Department of Health and Human Services and BCFS Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to request for comment.
ORR’s reasoning for the waiver was that the agency was under urgent pressure to open the camp quickly and that the state may not be willing or able to perform those child abuse and neglect checks for a detention facility under federal jurisdiction, the memo said.
The agency also justified its waiver on the assumption that Tornillo staff had already undergone FBI fingerprint background checks, according to the memo. But that is not the case, the inspector general said.
The facility has undergone a recent expansion since the administration first announced it was opening the temporary shelter for a couple of hundred migrant children six months ago.
The detention camp was first designed to temporarily house about 450 children in June, when Trump’s zero tolerance policy separated over 2,500 migrant children from their parents. The majority of the separated children have since been reunited, but HHS still oversees the care of migrant children and adolescents who come to the U.S. alone.
The inspector general’s office requested in its memo that the Administration for Children and Families provide a written response on the actions being taken to ensure Tornillo facility’s employees are receiving the required FBI background checks and insufficient staffing of clinicians was being addressed within 30 days.
VICE News reported earlier Tuesday that workers at the Tornillo detention facility had not received the mandated FBI fingerprint checks.
An HHS spokesperson told VICE that BCFS Health and Human Services had the responsibility of making sure the FBI fingerprint checks were being conducted.
But BCFS said the company has been unable to do those checks because of a technicality in how it accesses the FBI databases, according to VICE.