TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — An eastern Kansas nonprofit that shelters troubled children wasn’t providing details Thursday about immigrant children staying at its group homes, including whether any of them were separated from their parents in a crackdown on illegal crossings of the U.S-Mexico border.
The lack of information on the children housed by The Villages prompted two state lawmakers to schedule a Statehouse news conference Friday to demand more transparency. They said The Villages told them it needed two weeks’ notice for a tour of its Topeka homes.
“We don’t know what the arrangement is — that’s the thing,” said Democratic state Rep. John Alcala, of Topeka, one of the lawmakers calling the news conference. “It was the non-transparency that concerned us the most.”
The Villages, based in Topeka, has a contract with the federal government to house and provide services for 50 “unaccompanied children” ages 6 to 18, Joseph Wittrock, its president, confirmed Thursday. The nonprofit operates five group homes on 400 rural acres just outside Topeka and two others in Lawrence. The seven homes can house a total of 80 children.
Wittrock made his comments and issued a lengthy statement about The Villages’ history, mission and commitment to helping immigrant children following a media report that the group was housing children separated from families at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a “zero tolerance” immigration policy in place since April.
But Wittrock wouldn’t say how many children in the care of The Villages were separated from families at the border during the recent crackdown and how many entered the country without family members as unaccompanied minors. He noted that the federal government classifies them all as unaccompanied children.
He also would not say how many of the 50 spots for immigrant children were filled Thursday. He said The Villages seeks to reunite them with their families and has had “great success.”
An online federal database shows that The Villages’ contract for the federal Unaccompanied Alien Children Program has been worth a total of more than $5.9 million for two years. The database showed an award of $2.16 million on May 4, which Wittrock described as an annual contract renewal.
The Villages was founded in the 1960s by famed psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger, who pushed psychiatry into the mainstream of American life and led a world-renowned clinic in Topeka until his death in 1990.
“There is no secret — The Villages is proud of our heritage and history of success of helping children in need, irrespective of background or circumstance,” Wittrock said in his statement.
Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat also participating in Friday’s news conference, said he doesn’t worry about the children’s care but wants to know about plans for reuniting them with their families.
Lori Ross, president and CEO of Foster Adopt Connect, a Kansas City, Missouri-based placement agency, said no plans exist and that concerns child welfare advocates nationally. She said they worry the children will become “legal orphans” in the U.S. with no chance of being reunited with their parents.
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