This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A state review into the treatment of immigrant teens held at a Virginia detention center confirms the facility uses restraint techniques that can include strapping children to chairs and placing mesh bags over their heads.

But investigators concluded the harsh treatment described by detainees at the Shenandoah Valley juvenile center did not meet the state’s legal threshold of abuse or neglect, according to a copy of the findings issued on Monday by the Virginia department of juvenile justice and obtained by the Associated Press.

The regulators did make several recommendations to improve conditions inside the facility, including hiring more bilingual staff and better screening to provide care for detainees who suffer from mental health issues.

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Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, ordered the review in June hours after first-person accounts by children as young as 14, who said they were handcuffed, shackled and beaten at the facility, were published by the news agency.

They also described being stripped of their clothes and locked in solitary confinement, sometimes strapped to chairs with bags over their heads at the facility near Staunton, 150 miles south-west of Washington DC.

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The state investigators said they were unable to interview the teens directly alleging abuse. Those who made the initial complaints as part of a federal class-action lawsuit filed in November 2017 were subsequently transferred or deported back to their home countries after the resolution of their cases. But they interviewed other detainees.

Hannah Lieberman, a lawyer at the Washington Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, representing the Latino teens involved in the lawsuit, said the state report does not disprove the abuse allegations by her clients. She said the legal case against the facility will proceed.

The incidents described in sworn statements from six teens are alleged to have occurred between 2015 and 2018, under both the Obama and Trump administrations.

The children were detained in the prison-like facility on administrative immigration charges.



According to the state report, local child protective services investigators reviewed complaints and interviewed residents in June. They determined the behavior “did not meet the legal definition of abuse or neglect”.



