Shelter in the Storm (slate.com) {Profile of Southwest Point, contractor holding migrant children}

[eppur_se_muova]

Southwest Key was a model shelter for migrant kids. Once Trump’s family separation policy began, it became a villain.

By Henry Grabar
July 06, 20186:13 PM

n 2014, four years before it became synonymous in the public imagination with the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” family separation policy, Southwest Key Programs applied for a permit from the city of Escondido, California, to open a children’s shelter. The wave of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border, which President Obama that summer labeled an “actual humanitarian crisis,” was at its apex. Of the 57,000 children who crossed the border alone in the 2014 fiscal year, more than 45,000 wound up in shelters like Southwest Key. The Austin, Texas–based nonprofit had evolved into a crucial link in a migration path that stretched from the violence-ravaged neighborhoods of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to U.S. cities like Houston and Chicago where Central-American immigrants have established thriving communities.

Escondido, a wealthy conservative enclave outside San Diego, rejected the application, arguing the children’s shelter would have a “negative impact” on the community and its property values. Southwest Key sued. Big-time liberal institutions, including the ACLU and Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice, arrived in support. Southwest Key argued the city had violated the Fair Housing Act—that denying the permit effectively caused a disparate impact based on race. (The suit would settle in 2017.) The city’s position was that the shelter was basically a detention center or a jail, and not subject to the 1968 civil rights law. Not so, the Obama administration argued: Southwest Key is a home.

In June, a similar situation played out with a different outcome. After the Trump administration’s family separation policy made international headlines, placing new demands on existing child shelters, Southwest Key announced it would lease a Houston warehouse to care for children and nursing mothers who had been apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, told the nonprofit to reconsider and asked the state not to license the facility, suggesting that the city might drag its feet issuing the appropriate permits. “I do not want to be an enabler in this process,” Turner said. “If we don’t speak, if we don’t say no, then these types of policies will continue.” State Sen. Sylvia Garcia, who is likely headed to Washington as a Democratic congresswoman in the fall, was more direct. “We stand here in opposition to this proposed baby jail near downtown.”

In three months, the organization had gone from a Latino-founded nonprofit that attracted Hispanic-American social workers to a “baby jail” assailed as a money-hungry player in the Trump administration’s plan to violate migrants’ human rights. How that reputation changed overnight is a story about how a nominally apolitical institution became entangled with, and compromised by, the government policies that drive its operations. It’s a case study in one of the central dilemmas of the Trump era: whether it’s possible to be a good actor in a bad system.
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lots more: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/southwest-key-and-family-separations-was-the-shelter-complicit.html

[mr_lebowski]

1. Yes, well ... there's FUNDAMENTALLY a HUGE difference between caring for kids who show up alone

at our borders ... and kids who show up WITH their parents (and/or close supervisory relatives), and are subsequently separated from them due to a NEW, highly politicized, and draconian policy of declaring the parents as criminals subject to incarceration and having their kids taken away.

I don't necessarily 'blame' this SWK company, esp. if their contract for taking care of ANY kids was based on their willingness to except ALL kids, regardless of the circumstances that led to said kids needing their care, which I'd not be surprised to hear was the case (but I'd like to know more about that ... was it even within their contractual 'power' to say 'No' to taking kids that were victims of Trump's separation policy, had they wanted to refuse on ethical grounds?).

I further have no 'issue' with the Democrat's apparent about-face on the subject, for the same reason. There's a big f***ing difference in the two scenarios.

Also, screw you Slate for your little 'similar situation' slam, trying to paint Democrats as hypocritical. It AIN'T that similar. The very real differences ... are the reason for the change of heart/attitude. Shame on you for letting that point go unsaid.