The private security contractor in question, MVM, is being sued over the separation of two young Guatemalans from their fathers in 2017
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has signed a contract with a private security firm to locate migrant children who arrived in the US without their parents, although the company is facing accusations of ‘torture,’ The Guardian has reported.
The agency, which is part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), hired the Virginia-based company MVM in mid-April to assist with its expanding effort to track down minors who had been released into communities pending immigration court proceedings, the paper said in an article on Saturday.
A one-year deal was signed between ICE and the contractor, which provides detention and transport services to federal immigration agencies, it added.
MVM is currently being sued over the separation of two Guatemalan fathers from their respective children in 2017. The lawsuit, which had been filed in a California court two years ago, alleges “torture, enforced disappearance and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” on the part of the company.
Its employees “physically took thousands of children away from their parents” before transporting them “using unmarked vehicles, commercial airlines, and makeshift detention centers,” the document read.
A DHS spokesperson said that MVM has “zero immigration enforcement authority” and that the partnership with the firm represents the agency’s “commitment to protect vulnerable children from sexual abuse and exploitation.”
“The primary focus of this initiative is to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure thaat they are safe and not being exploited or abused,” the spokesperson stressed.
The Guardian said that it had reviewed an internal ICE document last year, which suggested that it actually runs an operation aimed at deporting the children or pursuing criminal cases against them or the adults providing for them.
“Accusations that ICE is ‘targeting’ and arresting children are false and an attempt to demonize law enforcement,” the DHS spokesperson insisted.
Democratic lawmaker Delia Ramirez, who is of Guatemalan descent, has called upon Congress to monitor the arrangement between ICE and MVM.
“DHS continues to be a threat to our collective safety. It is beyond reckless to hire a company of dangerous bounty hunters, with a concerning track record of abuse, to ‘track’ immigrant children,” she wrote on X on Sunday.
