A 3-year-old child was separated from her mother after she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and endured sexual abuse while she was kept in prolonged federal immigration custody, according to allegations in court records.
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On Sunday, the American Bar Association’s Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project published a social media video showing the girl, whose face was blurred, being reunified with her father, a legal permanent resident living in Chicago.
The organization had filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal district court on Feb. 18 to expedite her release to her father after she was kept in federal custody for five months.
“When a parent is a citizen or a resident, the government is required to reunify the family within 10 days,” Laura Peña, director of the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project in South Texas, told Noticias Telemundo in Spanish in a video interview.
The girl’s mother brought her to the U.S. on Sept. 16. Agents with Customs and Border Protection separated them after they charged the mother with making false statements, according to the habeas corpus petition.
Agents then designated the girl as an unaccompanied minor and transferred her to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a subdivision of the Department of Health and Human Services that manages the care of unaccompanied migrant children.
On Nov. 11, while she was in ORR care, the girl’s foster parent noticed her underwear was on backward. According to the habeas corpus petition, that’s when the girl “disclosed to her foster parent that an older child in the home had sexually abused her.”
The older child is alleged to have sexually abused the girl multiple times, causing bleeding, the habeas corpus petition says. The 3-year-old underwent forensic examination and an interview, resulting in the removal of the other child from the ORR-funded foster home.
The girl’s father told The Associated Press, which first reported the story, that he didn’t learn about the sexual abuse until he had turned to the courts as a last resort to be reunited with his daughter.
According to the father, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to prevent identifying his daughter as a victim of sexual abuse, ORR officials told him the girl had an “accident” and would be examined.
“I asked them: ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they just told me that they couldn’t give me more information, that it was under investigation,” the father said.
It wasn’t until attorneys at the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project began helping him get his daughter released that the father realized the “accident” officials had referred to was alleged sexual abuse.
“The abuse of his 3-year-old daughter was truly horrific. The government didn’t even share that information with him,” Peña said. “It is a grave injustice.”
The father had submitted a sponsor application to ORR a day after his daughter was admitted to one of their shelters. But his attempts to be reunited with his daughter dragged on for months, as ORR had no appointments available for him to undergo required fingerprinting and DNA testing, which are part of a designated process meant to ensure parents are viable sponsors.
“We had to file a lawsuit in federal court because the government kept saying, ‘Oh, there’s this requirement, and that requirement’ — which is fine — but then the government says, ‘There are no appointments available.’ Well, then, what are you supposed to do?” Peña said.
Even after the father was identified as a viable sponsor, ORR continued to delay his reunification process, listing an “unknown” timeline for the girl’s release, according to the habeas corpus petition.
The girl was released to her father two days after he filed the habeas corpus petition on her behalf, according to the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project.
On Feb. 21, they were reunited for the first time in months.
“After five months, as her father has said, the little girl is different,” Peña said.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t comment on any of the allegations outlined in court records, and it referred NBC News to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Administration for Children and Families, the HHS branch that oversees ORR, told NBC News in an email Monday it “does not comment on matters subject to ongoing litigation.”
Court records show the case was closed March 5 following the girl’s release.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office last year, the average custody times for children cared for by ORR grew from 37 days to almost 200 days this February, the AP reported. The total number of children in ORR custody fell by about half during the same period.
As a result, attorneys have increasingly turned to habeas petitions as a kind of emergency lawsuit to expedite the release of children to their parents and sponsors.
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