San Diego
The government of El Salvador said the three, ages 12 to 17, were victimized at shelters in Arizona, and it asked the U.S. to make their return a priority.
“May they leave the shelters as soon as possible, because it is there that they are the most vulnerable,” Deputy Foreign Relations Minister Liduvina Magarin said in San Salvador on Thursday.
The U.S. government already is facing heavy criticism over its slow pace in reuniting more than 2,600 children who were separated from their parents last spring before the Trump administration agreed to stop the practice. Most have since been reunited, but nearly 500 children remain in U.S. government-funded shelters without their parents more than a month after the deadline set by a judge, according to court papers filed on Thursday night.
Before the Trump administration reversed course, many of the parents had been deported to their home countries while their children remained in shelters in the U.S.
Attorneys for the U.S. government and the immigrant families discussed how to accelerate the process at a hearing on Friday in San Diego in front of U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who set the deadline.
Magarin gave few details on the three cases other than to say they involved “sexual violations, sexual abuses.” She said her government is ready with lawyers and psychologists to help the families, adding: “The psychological and emotional impact is forever.”
“It’s unbelievable that children who were fleeing violence here were met in the United States with the worst violence a child could encounter,” said Cesar Rios, director of the Salvadoran Migrant Institute.
More information is needed to investigate, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services said in a statement on Friday, that adding that “without additional details, we are unable to confirm or deny these allegations took place” at a facility overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
It contracts with nonprofits and other third parties to run shelters for unaccompanied minors arriving at the border.