MIGRANT CHILDREN SITES IN EL CAJON AND LEMON GROVE SHUT DOWN: TRUMP ADMIN. DROPS LAWSUIT THAT ACCUSED OPERATOR OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Actions raise concerns over children’s wellbeing; their locations are undisclosed
By Karen Pearlman
Miriam Raftery contributed to this story; photos by East County Magazine staff
Updated Aug. 15 with responses from federal officials
Aug. 14, 2025 (El Cajon) – Nonprofit Southwest Key Programs Inc. (photo, left) is no longer operating its site in El Cajon that had been housing unaccompanied immigrant children since the first Trump administration.
El Cajon City Manager Graham Mitchell told the City Council and staff on Monday via email that the United States’ largest provider of housing and services for unaccompanied minors has left the city.
“Larger employers are required by law to inform the City if they go out of businesses or initiate a large-scale layoff,” the email said. “Earlier today, the City received a notice from Southwest Key (operating on Broadway) that they lost federal funding and will be shutting down. As you recall, Southwest Key has been operating at the site for many years operating as a facility for unaccompanied minors that have entered into the United States from the southern U.S. border.”
The El Cajon site had housed boys; a similar site in Lemon Grove housed migrant girls.
The El Cajon facility drew scrutiny in 2018 during the Trump-era separation of migrant children from families, when protesters demonstrated outside the facility and Congressional members Juan Vargas and Susan Davis visited the site amid allegations of sexual abuse, neglect and runaways at U.S.-run facilities operated by Southwest Key, as ECM reported -- see photo, below, right.
Lemon Grove City Manager Lydia Romero told East County Magazine that she has not received word that Southwest Key’s site in Lemon Grove has closed, but a call to the organization’s office on El Prado Avenue resulted in a disconnected phone line.
Southwest Key confirms El Cajon closure, but has not responded to inquiries in children’s current locations
In an email from Southwest Key Programs Chief of Staff Christina Cantu to ECM states, “Southwest Key Programs has received official notice from the US Department of Health and Human Services - Administration of Children and Families that our grants offering residential shelter services for unaccompanied children with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) have concluded.
“Southwest Key Programs is committed to ensuring an orderly transition in close coordination with our federal partners, and we appreciate our dedicated staff whose professionalism and compassion have shaped our programs and aided those we serve.”
Follow-up emails asking about the whereabouts for current clients that are in Southwest Key’s care have not been answered.
Natalie Baldassarre, senior media affairs manager for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, referred ECM to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
In an email to ECM, Emily G. Hilliard, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote: “As a matter of policy, to protect the privacy and security of unaccompanied alien children referred to us, ORR does not identify the names or locations of shelters.”
Serious and pervasive abuse allegations
Southwest Key has been working with the government for more than two decades. But the company has struggled with allegations of abuse and harassment of minors at its facilities and has been under scrutiny.
Southwest Key has operated 27 residential shelters that provide temporary living arrangements for unaccompanied alien children in Texas, Arizona and California. Southwest Key has been operating its shelters through grants from the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement. (Unaccompanied alien children are minors who enter the U.S. without parents or other legal guardians and without lawful immigration status in the U.S.)
The Biden administration’s Justice Dept. filed a lawsuit in 2024 against Southwest Key alleging pervasive abuse and even rape of children at multiple facilities, Associated Press reported, though no specific abuse cases were cited at the El Cajon or Lemon Grove sites.
The Biden-era lawsuit alleged that Southwest Key, through its employees, subjected unaccompanied alien children in its care to unlawful sexual harassment and abuse.
The lawsuit said that “from at least 2015 through at least 2023, multiple Southwest Key employees have subjected unaccompanied children in their care to repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct and a hostile housing environment, including severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos, entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, sexual comments and gestures, leering, and inappropriate touching.
“In some cases, Southwest Key employees threatened children to maintain their silence. In harassing these children, these Southwest Key employees exploited the children’s vulnerabilities, language barriers, and distance from family and loved ones. Despite knowledge of these severe and pervasive harms, Southwest Key failed to take appropriate action to protect the children in its care. Southwest Key’s actions constitute a pattern or practice of discrimination in housing because of sex in violation of the Fair Housing Act.”
Trump’s Justice Dept. drops the abuse case against Southwest Key, announces it will move children but does not disclose new locations
But the Trump administration in March inexplicably dropped the lawsuit, though Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the administration would move the children to other locations.
“This administration is working fearlessly to end the tragedy of human trafficking and other abuses of unaccompanied alien children who enter the country illegally,” Kennedy said. “For too long, pernicious actors have exploited such children both before and after they enter the United States. Today’s action is a significant step toward ending this appalling abuse of innocents.”
A March press release from the Dept. of Justice said that “Out of continuing concerns relating to these placements, HHS has decided to stop placement of unaccompanied alien children in Southwest Key facilities, and to review its grants with the organization.”
“Securing our border and protecting children from abuse are among the most critical missions of the Department of Justice and the Trump administration,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the press release. “Under the border policies of the previous administration, bad actors were incentivized to exploit children and break our laws: this ends now.”
In fact, however, the concerns over migrant children arose during the first Trump administration, which implemented a policy of separating children from parents at the border, and also implemented a policy of sending unaccompanied migrant children to the Southwest Key facilities, instead of making efforts to reunite them with parents or other family members.
Left: A protester at Southwest Key in El Cajon from 2019
The Trump administration reportedly separated more than 4,600 children from their parents, then inexplicably lost track of them. The Biden administration eventually tracked down most and helped reunite about 2/3 of those children with their families. However, about 1,300 of the children taken by ICE under Trump’s first term of office have never been found, MSN reported earlier this year.
Closures, dropping of lawsuit raise disturbing questions
Closure of the Southwest Key facilities for migrant children in El Cajon and Lemon Grove raises deeply disturbing questions:
Why did the Trump administration drop the lawsuit that could have held abusers responsible for their actions against vulnerable children?
How many children remained at these facilities when the decision to shut them down was made?
Most important, where are these children now?
East County Magazine is reaching out to multiple federal agencies and local Congressional members seeking answers.