Casa Padre is a shelter for unaccompanied or separated immigrant minors in custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of Health & Human Services, located in

Brownsville, Texas Brownsville () is a city in Cameron County in the U.S. state of Texas. It is on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Mexico. The city covers , and has a population of 186,738 as of the 2020 census. It ...

. The site opened in March 2017, and is still housing children in 2022. The building was formerly a

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

store. The center is run by the nonprofit group Southwest Key Programs under contract from the federal government. Casa Padre is the largest licensed childcare facility in the United States, housing approximately 1,500 youths. The former Walmart store houses boys ranging from ages 10 to 17. According to the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...

, the group houses approximately 5,129 immigrant children in the United States, approximately 4 percent of the unaccompanied minors in the United States today.

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On June 3, 2018, Oregon Senator

Jeff Merkley Jeffrey Alan Merkley (born October 24, 1956) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Oregon since 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, Merkley served as the 64th speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives ...

was denied entrance to the Casa Padre facility as part of his investigation into the living conditions of the children. After he was denied entry into the facility by the police, he stated that "Americans should be outraged by the fact that our taxpayer dollars are being used to inflict spiteful and traumatizing policies onto innocent minors." The recorded exchange between Merkley and the employees of the facility was uploaded to YouTube and was shared 1.1 million times. Then-House Minority Leader

Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who has served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2019 and previously from 2007 to 2011. She has represented in the United States House of ...

condemned both the detention facility and the Trump Administration's controversial immigration policies, stating, "This is barbaric. This is not what America is. But this is the policy of the Trump administration." Then-Speaker of the House

Paul Ryan Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American former politician who served as the List of Speakers of the United States House of Representatives, 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. A member o ...

stated his disapproval of the Trump Administration's policy towards separating children from their parents. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma tweeted, "I am asking the White House to keep families together as much as we can."

References

2017 establishments in Texas Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement Buildings and structures in Brownsville, Texas Immigration detention centers and prisons in the United States Trump administration controversies {{Texas-stub

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