Photo credit: Fox 11
For five months, the young father waited for his 3-year-old daughter’s release from federal custody after she crossed the US-Mexico border with her mother, hoping for their safe reunion.
PBS News reports that only when he turned to the courts as a last resort did he learn that the girl had suffered alleged sexual abuse at the foster home where she’d been placed after immigration officials separated her from her mother.
“She was so long in there,” said her father, who is a legal permanent resident in the United States. “I just think that if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.” He told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to prevent identifying his daughter as a victim of sexual abuse.
President Donald Trump’s administration began targeting detained immigrant children, like the man’s daughter, last year when it implemented new rules and procedures, which were immediately followed by a jump in detention times. The federal government intensified efforts to expand family detention indefinitely by motioning to terminate a cornerstone policy ensuring the protection of immigrant children in federal custody.
For months after the girl was placed in foster care, her father’;s attempts to be reunited stalled as the government told him it couldn’t make an appointment to take his fingerprints.
During that time, according to court documents, the girl said she was sexually abused by an older child staying with her in foster care in Harlingen, Texas. A caregiver noticed the child’s underwear was on backward, according to the lawsuit. The girl then told the caregiver she had been abused multiple times, and it had caused bleeding. Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement officials told the father that there had been an “accident” and his daughter would be examined, he told the AP in an interview.
The girl underwent a forensic exam and interview. Although the father wasn’t told of the outcome, the older child accused of the abuse was removed from that foster program, according to the lawsuit.
The abuse allegations were reported to local law enforcement, said Lauren Fisher Flores, the lawyer representing the girl.
“To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable,” Fisher Flores said. “Children deserve safety, and they belong with their parents.”
