Thread by @reveal

1/ NEW INVESTIGATION:

The shelters that house immigrant kids are dens of abuse and neglect.

Forced drugging.

Sexual assault.

Child pornography.

Poor safety practices.

revealnews.org/article/migran…

2/ Yet, in nearly every case, the government has kept sending children to them.

And it's sent $1.5 billion to homes with serious allegations of abuse over the past four years alone.

3/ The Shiloh Treatment Center, for example, is a mobile home complex-turned-child care center in rural Texas.

In lawsuit filings and interviews, children reported being forcibly given psychotropic medications.

It received $25 million in grants over the past four years.

4/ Maribel Bernardez's 9-year-old boy was sent to Shiloh.

She says he was drugged against their will.

“He was completely hypnotized and lethargic,” she said.

5/ Bernardez's son told us Central American immigrant children routinely were physically assaulted – including in front other staffers.

“There was the man that hit me,” he said.

6/ Shiloh has been the focus of repeated allegations of child abuse.

So many, in fact, that local district attorney to call on the ORR to increase monitoring.

Children died at two other facilities connected to Shiloh’s owner, in cases that were ruled homicides.

7/ There's more.

In Texas, staff members at some facilities failed to seek treatment for kids with burns and broken bones.

One child was given medication she was allergic to – even though she was wearing a wristband intended to alert caregivers about the allergy.

8/ Last year, a worker at a Florida shelter for migrant children was sentenced to 10 years in prison after she admitted to trading sexually explicit photos and text messages with minors there.

miamiherald.com/news/local/com…

9/ In New York, a Guatemalan boy was sexually assaulted by an older boy at a shelter in 2013, according to a doctor’s report.

His mother got a hospital bill, but no real explanation of what happened.

pri.org/stories/2014-0…

10/ At a facility in Maine run by a behavioral and mental health nonprofit, a social worker remained on the job for months after state regulators received a complaint in 2016 accusing him of having sex with an adult client.

pressherald.com/2016/07/18/lic…

11/ In these cases (and dozens of others reviewed by us and our partner on this investigation, @TexasTribune), federal officials continued sending children who crossed the border to the shelters after the incidents came to light.

@TexasTribune 12/ In fact, records reviewed by Reveal indicate just two cases in which the Office of Refugee Resettlement terminated an agreement with a shelter provider after serious allegations of child mistreatment.

One was a Texas company cited for over 100 documented violations.

@TexasTribune 13/ In total:

Taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion in the past four years to private companies that run shelters with serious allegations against them.

@TexasTribune 14/ Expect more from us soon. We have a team of reporters on the story.

We've launched a newsletter so you can keep up with the best investigative reporting on this crisis, Kids on the Line.

Sign up to get our emails: revealnews.org/newsletter.

@TexasTribune 15/ Send us tips or questions here on Twitter, or via email: border [at] revealnews [dot] org.

@TexasTribune 16/ And thanks to our partners at @TexasTribune, a nonprofit org like us that does vital reporting on Texas issues.

New: President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy is creating a zombie army of children forcibly injected with medications that make them dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated.

That's according to legal filings.

revealnews.org/blog/immigrant…