About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 28, 2018)
TODAYS TOP HEADLINES The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com Wednesday, November 28, 2018 3A TEXAS Detention camp for teen migrants keeps growing Temporary, emergency facility in desert shows no signs of closing Photos by IVAN PIERRE AGUIRRE I Associated Press Migrant teens inside the Tornillo detention camp sit inside the facility Nov. 25 in Tornillo, Texas. Dalila Reynoso-Gonzalez, center left, a program director for the Methodist immigration advocacy group Justice for our Neighbors of East Texas, and another protestor talk with a Department of Homeland Security official Nov. 15 outside the Tornillo detention camp. Manafort allegations throw uncertainty into Russia probe Associated Press BY GARANCE BURKE AND MARTHA MENDOZA Associated Press TORNILLO - The Trump administration announced in June it would open a temporary shelter for up to 360 migrant chil dren in this isolated corner of the Texas desert. Less than six months later, the facility has expanded into a detention camp holding thousands of teenagers — and it shows every sign of becoming more permanent. By Tuesday, 2,324 largely Central American boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were sleeping inside the highly guarded facil ity in rows of bunk beds in canvas tents, some of which once housed first respond ers to Hurricane Harvey. More than 1,300 teens have arrived since the end of October. Rising from the cotton fields and dusty roads not far from the fence marking the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the camp has rows of beige tents and golf carts that ferry staffers carrying walkie-talkies. Teens with identical haircuts and gov ernment-issued shirts and pants can be seen walking single file from tent to tent, flanked by staff at the front and back. More people are detained in Tornillo’s tent city than in all but one of the nation’s 204 federal prisons, and con struction continues. None of the 2,100 staff are going through rigorous FBI fingerprint background checks, according to a gov ernment watchdog memo published Tuesday. “Instead, Tornillo is using checks con ducted by a private con tractor 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 says. Federal plans to close Tornillo by Dec. 31 may be impossible to meet. There aren’t 2,300 extra beds in other facilities, and a con tract obtained by the AP shows the project could continue into 2020. Planned closures have already been extended three times since this summer. The teens at Tornillo were not separated from their families at the border. Almost all came on their own hoping to join family mem bers in the United States. The camp’s population may grow even more if migrants in the caravans cas tigated by President Donald Trump enter the U.S. Fed eral officials have said they may fly caravan teens who arrive in San Diego directly to El Paso, then bus them to Tornillo, according to a non profit social service provider who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to publicly discuss the matter. As the population inside the camp swells, young detainees’ anguish has deepened. “The few times they let me call my mom I would tell her that one day I would be free, but really I felt like I would be there for the rest of my life,” a 17-year-old from Honduras who was held at Tornillo earlier this year told AP. “I feel so bad for the kids who are still there. What if they have to spend Christ mas there? They need a hug, and nobody is allowed to hug there.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from immigration authorities. The nonprofit agency con tracted to run Tornillo says it is proud of its work. It says it is operating the facility with the same precision and care used for shelters put up after natural disasters. “We don’t have anything to hide. This is an excep tionally run operation,” said Krista Piferrer, a spokes woman for BCFS Health and Human Services, a faith- based organization. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mark Weber, said no decisions have been made about whether Tornillo will close by year’s end as scheduled. “Whatever it is we decide to do, in the very near future, we’ll do a public notice about that,” he said. In June, as detention cen ters for migrant children overflowed, Scott Lloyd, director of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, signed a memo granting a waiver to staff up Tornillo without the required child abuse and neglect checks, which flag any potential employee who has a record of hurting a child. There were two reasons, according to a memo by HHS’s inspec tor general’s office: first, there was pressure to move quickly to open the detention camp, and second, Lloyd’s agency assumed Tornillo staff had already undergone FBI fingerprint checks. They had not. WASHINGTON - The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump cam paign chairman Paul Manafort and an explosive British news report about alleged contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threw a new element of uncertainty into the Trump- Russia probe Tuesday. A day after prosecu tors accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them, trashing his deal to tell all in return for a lighter sen tence, he denied a report he secretly met with Assange in March 2016. That’s the same month he joined the Trump campaign and that Russian hackers began an effort to penetrate the emails of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The developments thrust Manafort back into the spotlight, raising new ques tions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Rus sian election interference and any possible coordina tion with Trump associates in the campaign that sent the celebrity businessman to the White House. At the same time, other figures entangled in the investigation, including Trump himself, have been scrambling to escalate attacks and allegations against prosecutors who have spent weeks working quietly behind the scenes. Besides denying he’d ever met Assange, Manafort said he’d told Robert Mueller’s prosecu tors the truth during ques tioning. And WikiLeaks said Manafort never met with Assange, offering to bet London’s Guardian newspaper “a million dol lars and its editor’s head.” Assange, whose orga nization published thou sands of emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign in 2016, is in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London under a claim of asylum. 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