By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
March 31, 2020
March 31, 2020
Federal agents have exposed a shocking tale of illicit relationships between a government contract worker and an illegal immigrant boy she was supposed to be taking care of — and a plot by three employees to orchestrate a jailbreak to free him from custody.
The teen was an unaccompanied alien child, among the most vulnerable migrants who arrive at the southwestern border. Minors unaccompanied by parents are supposed to get the highest levels of protection and immediate transfer to social workers contracted by the Health and Human Services Department.
It was at one of those contract facilities — Southwest Key’s Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas — where the teen, identified as Jeffry Nai Gonzalez-Melendez, was staying when the three women plotted to break him out, according to court documents.
Kevin J. Morehouse, special agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a court affidavit that the agency discovered the plot this year when a contraband phone found in the possession of a child at the facility had nude photos of one of the staffers.
When agents questioned employee Evericka Velasquez, she let them see her phone. They discovered a chat with Karla Izaguirre in which the women plotted the boy’s escape.
Ms. Izaguirre, confronted with the evidence, admitted to the whole thing, according to the affidavit.
The three women arranged to have Mr. Gonzalez run away while he and other UACs were on a field trip away from the facility at the Harlingen Arts and Heritage Museum, the court documents charge.
One of the women picked him up and delivered him to a bus station in town, where Ms. Izaguirre met him and began to harbor him.
One of the women picked him up and delivered him to a bus station in town, where Ms. Izaguirre met him and began to harbor him.
“Izaguirre stated that she did help plan the escape of Gonzalez even though she knew he was illegally present in the United States. Izaguirre then states that for approximately three months she provided Gonzalez with food, clothing and shelter in her own home,” Mr. Morehouse told the court.
The complaint charges Ms. Izaguirre with harboring an illegal immigrant and with conspiracy to harbor. She has a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Her attorney told The Washington Times that she did not want to comment yet on the case against her.
Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, called the case “a little shocking but not at all surprising.”
“When we have policies that encourage minors to come here illegally, and when the system is overwhelmed by the number of new arrivals, and when there are inflexible rules that assume every minor is an innocent young child when really most are older teenage boys, things are going to go wrong,” she said.
The Times could find no record of charges against the other two women, Ms. Velasquez and Ada Ordaz, who the court files say picked up Mr. Gonzalez when he fled from a field trip and delivered him to Ms. Izaguirre at a bus station in town.
Southwest Key said it suspended and then fired the women involved and reported the incident to authorities.
Click on link to read rest of story: https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/31/hhs-worker-charged-sex-smuggling/