Per usual practice of your MesaZona blogger, curiosity sometimes get me going.Like about three years ago getting-around just by chance noticing an empty neglected boarded-up building on 2nd Avenue that looked there was an original size-able plan and investment for it that didn't quite work out as planned. . . The image to the left shows how it appears today - just this morning as a matter of fact. It was a mystery until getting an article in a newsfeed months ago and bookmarking it for future reference.
Asking around, no one knew anything about it. Then one day about 18 months ago, it looked occupied and fixed-up, so I went in the entrance to find out what good thing turned this abandoned property around - only to be greeted cautiously if not a guarded stand-off in apprehension to an unexpected visitor, being more or less told it's for kids, get out. Hmmm.
There was some sign inside that read:
Southwest Key.
That's all I knew, except that Southwest Key operates other care facilities in Mesa.
What your MesaZona blogger did not realize until "catching some news" on YouTube two days ago that Southwest Key was making-the-news closer to the Mexican border:
> Scroll down for excerpt from an article in New York Magazine 16 hours ago about the SWK detention facility in Texas
Washington Post-Jun 14, 2018
“They used to do oil changes in here,” said Martin Hinojosa, director of compliance for Southwest Key Programs, the nonprofit group that runs ...
New York Magazine-16 hours ago
Southwest Key Programs is licensed to operate 26 similar facilities in three states, housing 5,129 immigrant children — nearly half of the ...
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Reporters Tour Texas Facility Where Migrant Children Are Detained
by Margaret Hartmann
The Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy calling for the prosecution of everyone who illegally enters the United States has led to the separation of parents from their children at the border, as parents are sent to jail and children are placed in government custody. It’s estimated that more than 1,358 children have been separated from their parents since October, and now for the first time since the Trump administration announced the policy, journalists have been allowed inside a shelter for the children, who are now deemed “unaccompanied minors.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services arranged for the media tour on Wednesday, less than two weeks after Senator Jeff Merkley was denied entry. . .
Southwest Key Programs is licensed to operate 26 similar facilities in three states, housing 5,129 immigrant children — nearly half of the roughly 11,200 kids currently in federal custody.
“We’re trying to do the best that we can taking care of these children. Our goal ultimately is to reunite kids with their families,” said Juan Sanchez, Southwest Key’s founder and chief executive. “We’re not a detention center … What we operate are shelters that take care of kids. It’s a big, big difference.”
Jacob Soboroff, who toured the facility with fellow journalists, tweeted about his experience on Wednesday night and filed a report on MSNBC. He said that while the children seem well cared for, “effectively these kids are incarcerated. . . "
Read more >>
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THE LOCAL CONNECTION: Here in Mesa there are not one, but two
05 March 2016: Southwest Key, which operates a federally funded "holding and education area" on the southwest corner of Country Club and Brown roads for unaccompanied minors who have entered the U.S. illegally, has been approved for an additional facility at 723 E. Second Ave. that will house 280 to 320 children.
. . . Reese L. Anderson, of Pew and Lake PLC, represented Cornerstone Properties and Southwest Key at the meeting.
The development will be in a former assisted-living facility in four buildings on 2.54 acres, according to a justification document filed by the applicant and available at http://mesa.legistar.com.
“This is the existing, old – and it has been vacant for a year-plus – Greenfields Assisted Living Facility. It’s a five-story building,” Mr. Anderson said at the meeting.
“What this proposal is, is to take this older building and put a great use in it now. The federal government operates what is called the unaccompanied minors program. It’s administered through the Department of Homeland Security Office of Refugee and Resettlement. This is where minors who are here in this country illegally are housed, they’re educated, they’re taken care of medically, mentally. They have schools. They get check-ups. This is where they’re taken care of by the federal government. They’re here for an average time of two to six weeks as the government works to reunite them either with family here in the states or back in their country of origin,” he said. . . . Southwest Key operates nine facilities in the Valley, he said.
Mesa Board of Adjustment voted 7-0 at a meeting March 2 to approve a special use permit to allow a group home in the RM-4 zoning district.
“I find the cause to be good and the operation to be clean and find myself in support of it,” Vice Chairman Trent Montague said at the meeting.
Voting yes were Chairman Mark Freeman, Vice Chairman Montague and board members Wade Swanson, Ken Rembold, Steven Curran and Jessica Sarkissian."
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