Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the new “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Marshals Service.Ĭompany President and CEO Kevin Marquez signed a five-year lease for the building March 9, one month before U.S. One of its vice presidents is a former CIA special agent and former acting director of the U.S. The company, which once provided guards for CIA facilities in Iraq, was founded by three former Secret Service agents. The building was leased in March by MVM, a Virginia-based defense contractor that has received contracts worth up to $248 million to transport immigrant children since 2014, records show. “I don’t know and I think that’s the worst part – not knowing what’s actually going on in there and just hoping that they’re OK.” “There’s been times where I drive by and I just start crying because, you know, it’s right behind my house,” said Dunlap, her voice wavering. The defense contractor leasing the building, MVM Inc., claims publicly that it does not operate “shelters or any other type of housing for minors.” Credit: Lianna Dunlap

When she asked questions, she said the workers responded with silence or terse answers.Ī cellphone video shows immigrant children being led into a vacant office building in Phoenix. Neighbor Lianna Dunlap’s videos show workers pulling up in white vans and leading dazed children into the building. There are new cameras on the building, extra locks on the doors and a paper shredder bin directly outside the building’s side door. It is not listed among shelters operating through the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement or on the state child care licensing website. Whether or not these children were taken from their parents, that “whatever” for them was the vacant building tucked away in a midtown Phoenix neighborhood. The building is not licensed by Arizona to hold children, and the contractor, MVM Inc., has claimed publicly that it does not operate “shelters or any other type of housing” for children.ĭefending the administration’s policy to separate families at the border in a May interview with NPR, White House chief of staff John Kelly promised: “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever.” Videos shot by an alarmed neighbor show children dressed in sweatsuits being led – one so young she was carried – into the 3,200-square-foot building in early June. defense contractor quietly detained dozens of immigrant children inside a vacant Phoenix office building with dark windows, no kitchen and only a few toilets during three weeks of the Trump administration’s family separation effort, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has learned. Want more? Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigations delivered straight to your inbox.Ī major U.S.

The office building inside