BY BOB KEEFER
Sue Quigley Trez ona
After 40 years
10,000 Women served
and 3,029 babies delivered!
Sue is retiring
Please join us for a celebration of her life’s work
at Alton Baker Park
Saturday June 23rd
10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Please bring your partner and children to
help us celebrate the amazing career of Sue
Please bring Pot luck snacks to share.
SUMMER SOLSTICE
SPECIAL
FREE foot soak and sauna
session with any treatment!
CALL TODAY TO BOOK!
Valid: 6/1/18 - 6/30/18
775 Monroe St.
Eugene, OR 97402
(541) 762 - 2009
www.injoywellnessmassage.com
‘ZERO TOLERANCE’ FOR MIGRANTS
Nonprofit corporations make millions off locking up refugee children
ocking up migrant children seeking refuge in the United
States is a multimillion-dollar business that makes a lot of
money for the jailers.
That’s become especially clear under the new “zero
tolerance” program, ordered by President Donald Trump,
under which immigrant children are being taken away from their
families and locked up in private contract facilities.
The biggest corporation benefitting from the new Trump pro-
gram is Southwest Key Programs Inc. of Austin, Texas. Southwest
Key, according to its website, operates 26 immigrant children’s
shelters in Texas, Arizona and California under contract to the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee
Resettlement. That’s about a quarter of the HHS/ORR children’s
shelters in the country.
Registered as a nonprofit, Southwest Key presents itself as a
good-hearted organization helping migrants in a time of crisis.
“During the 2014 youth immigration crisis at our southern bor-
der, Southwest Key was called upon by the federal government to
act as a humanitarian first responder in the care of those children,
providing round-the-clock services including: food, shelter, medi-
cal care, clothing, educational support, supervision and reunification
support to over 20,000 unaccompanied minors,” its website says.
But Southwest Key is secretive. Police were called and Or-
egon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley was barred from entry on June 3
when he tried to visit a Southwest Key facility in Brownsville,
Texas. (The company has since apologized.)
Though it’s legally a nonprofit, Southwest Key pays high sala-
ries to its top executives. CEO Juan Sanchez, who founded the
group in 1987, drew more than $1.5 million in pay and benefits in
2015 from Southwest, according to its most recent public tax fil-
ings. His wife, Jennifer Sanchez, is on the Southwest Key payroll
as a vice president for $262,000.
On the company website Sanchez lists his title as “El Presi-
dente.”
According to a 2015 story by the Arizona Daily Independent,
when children arrive at a Southwest Key facility “they are shown
a presentation that includes a tribute to El Presidente. Images of
El Presidente feeding masses of children flash before their eyes
as they are told that without his kindness they would not be here.”
In the ADI story, former Southwest Key employees painted a
bleak picture of the actual care given to children in their care.
“They see a prison-like facility operated by an organization that
views children as commodities and the employees as rent-a-cops,
whose most important mission is keep their mouths shut while the
organization does all it can to keep costs down and kids coming,”
L
• Where’s Walden? Call and write his of-
fices in Oregon and D.C. We have not heard
one word from Oregon Congressman Greg
Walden about the disgraceful separation of
families at our southern border. This is one
more reason to vote against him in Novem-
ber.
the ADI story says.
“To that end, staff must ignore the complaints of kids who are
hungry, who are given nothing more than a quarter-sized dollop of
soap with which to bathe, or given someone else’s underwear to
use because — after all — these kids should just be grateful that
El Presidente was kind enough to give them some place to land.”
More recently, a former Southwest Key employee named Antar
Davidson told The Los Angeles Times in a story published June 14
that children in the company’s Tucson shelter, Estrella del Norte,
were not allowed to hug one other. (The company has disputed his
account.)
Davidson resigned his job, saying, “I can no longer in good con-
science work with Southwest Key programs. I am feeling uneasy
about the morality of some of the practices,” the Times story says.
Here in Oregon, just one company contracts with HHS/ORR to
incarcerate “unaccompanied” immigrant children.
Morrison Child & Family Services, a nonprofit in Portland, re-
ceived 14 HHS/ORR contracts in 2018 for a total of $10.7 million.
The company provides a wide range of services to families and
children, according to its website, including care of sexually ex-
ploited children.
The Morrison website says little or nothing about its role in
holding migrant children for the government, except for a single
line on its website: “Transitional Services for Immigrant Youth.”
The website offers no further information about Morrison’s pro-
grams for immigrant youth.
But a note in its 2016 federal tax filing expands this slightly:
“Morrison partners with the Division of Children’s Services
(DCS), within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as well
as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services for the following
programs: staff secure, shelter, long term group home, post release
and home study, and foster care (closed November, 2016).”
On its nonprofit tax filing, Morrison reported $18.6 million in
grant income and donations during fiscal year 2016. According to
HHS records, in the same year it received about half that amount
— $8.9 million — in HHS grants for “shelter and staff-secure resi-
dential services for unaccompanied alien children.”
Unlike his counterpart at Southwest Key Programs, Morrison’s
CEO Drew Henrie-McWilliams received a mere $170,000 in sal-
ary, according to the group’s 2017 nonprofit tax filing.
Morrison’s press spokeswoman, Patricia DiNucci, declined to
give any details of its refugee housing program. “Morrison is proud
of the many programs that we operate to serve the children in our
community. Spotlighting specific service populations in the media
can be a detriment to all children in our care,” she emailed.
• Casey Barrett, vice-president of Obie
Companies and grandson of Brian Obie,
gave the City Club of Eugene an impres-
sive report on June 15th on the proposed
$60 million westward expansion of the 5th
Street Market District. One niggling ques-
tion: both this project and the development
of the former EWEB property along the
river call for retail and commercial space.
Where does this leave retail and commer-
cial development for downtown Eugene ?
• What we’re reading: William L. Shirer’s
little journalistic book on The Rise & Fall of
Adolf Hitler to refresh our memories on Hit-
ler’s belief in telling big lies, not little ones,
and the inability of Germans who did not
agree with Hitler to stop him. It’s a chilling
but important read for this time in America.
• Happy Solstice!
SLANT INCLUDES SHORT OPINION PIECES, OBSERVATIONS AND RUMOR-CHASING NOTES COMPILED BY THE EW EDITORIAL BOARD. HEARD ANY GOOD RUMORS LATELY? CONTACT EDITOR@EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
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June 21, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com
I L L U S T R AT I O N BY C H E L S E A P LO U F F E
NEWS