Tent City operator says Trump Admin pressured him to detain more young migrants

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/kzvmg3/head-of-controversial-tent-city-says-the-trump-administration-pressured-him-to-detain-more-young-migrants?utm_medium=vicenewstwitter

By Emily Green Jan 11, 2019

Kevin Dinnin, the CEO of the contractor that ran the controversial tent city for migrant children in Tornillo, Texas, says the facility is closing down because he refused the government’s request to detain more youths there.

Shrouded in secrecy since it opened in June to handle overflow of the Trump administration’s family separation policy, the facility at Tornillo became a symbol of the administration’s mass detention of undocumented children. Originally built to hold 400 migrant teens sent from its permanent facilities and and slated to close within 30 days, by December it had ballooned to a large complex holding more than 2,800 children.

“The children were coming in but never leaving,” Dinnin said in an exclusive interview with VICE News. The president and CEO of the nonprofit BCFS, which ran the facility under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said he was dismayed the U.S. government kept asking him to expand the camp.

Ultimately, he came to believe that HHS would continue sending migrant teenagers to Tornillo as long as it could. So on Dec. 17, Dinnin sent HHS and ORR a letter informing them that his nonprofit wouldn’t accept more children at the facility.