The temporary shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children at Naval Base Ventura County will close Aug. 31, according to county health officials.
Southwest Key Programs, the Texas-based nonprofit group contracted to operate the shelter, indicated Thursday that the facility would stop operating at the end of the month, West Ventura Medical Clinic Manager Kristina Navarro said Friday.
Dr. Ramsey Ulrich, director of the county-affiliated clinic that was contracted by Southwest Key to staff the shelter with medical personnel, sent an email Thursday to his staff saying Southwest Key “conveyed that the amount of children coming to the U.S. slowed significantly such that there is no need for emergency shelters on all the (Department of Defense) facilities.”
The news of the shelter closing comes less than a week after the Defense Department authorized Naval Base Ventura County and two other military sites to continue housing unaccompanied immigrant minors through at least January — four months longer than originally approved.
Naval Base Ventura County spokeswoman Kimberly Gearhart said the Port Hueneme facility would continue being offered to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but “whether HHS needs it or how they’re going to use it, I really can’t say.”
The Administration for Children and Families — the Health and Human Services agency that oversees the shelter — did not have an announcement yet on the temporary facilities, spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said in an email.
But according to Ulrich’s email, which was obtained by The Star, fewer than 200 children are currently living at the Port Hueneme shelter, and it is no longer receiving new children.
As of Tuesday, the shelter was housing about 250 immigrant teenagers — primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras — who were caught illegally crossing the border without a guardian.
Since the shelter opened June 6, more than 1,300 13- to 17-year-olds have been temporarily housed and discharged to a sponsor living in the United States.
Along with the Port Hueneme shelter, housing facilities were opened at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas and Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma to help Health and Human Services cope with the surge of Central American children crossing the border without a parent.
“Several factors will determine the continued need for these temporary shelters,” Wolfe said in the email, including “the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border, HHS’s capacity to care for the children in permanent, more cost-effective shelters, and the time it takes to place the children with sponsors.”
Custody of an unaccompanied minor detained at the border is transferred within 72 hours to Health and Human Services, which has about 100 permanent shelters near the southwest border.
Those shelters were overwhelmed with 57,000 unaccompanied children apprehended at the border during a nine-month span between October and June, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
That number was expected to hit 90,000 by the end of September — a nearly fourfold increase from the 24,000 unaccompanied minors detained by Customs and Border Patrol during the 2013 fiscal year.
Since the beginning of July, however, the number has decreased while HHS is placing more children with relatives or sponsors in the United States, Wolfe said.
“For the first time since this urgent humanitarian situation began, there are more children leaving custody than entering it on a weekly basis,” he said.
Southwest Key spokeswoman Cindy Casares would not confirm the closure of the Port Hueneme shelter because she could not get in touch with employees running the facility, she said.
“I don’t have updated information, things are always in flux until it’s final,” Casares said. “They’re in California. They are very busy running the shelter. I am in Austin (Texas).”
Southwest Key has been contracted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement — a division of the Administration for Children and Families — to run 14 permanent shelters for unaccompanied minors across Arizona, Texas and three California locations: El Cajon, Lemon Grove and Pleasant Hill.
The Port Hueneme shelter was the first temporary facility operated by Southwest Key, Casares said.
Casares said she could not provide other information about the local shelter because the Office of Refugee Resettlement directed Southwest Key to not communicate with the media regarding unaccompanied minors.
A Southwest Key recruitment manager did confirm Friday that the Port Hueneme shelter is no longer hiring.
Maria Duarte was overseeing a six-day job fair at the Ventura Beach Marriott to fill more than 330 temporary positions at the shelter, but the event unexpectedly ended early.
As hopeful job applicants arrived at the fair Thursday afternoon, they were turned away with little information by a handful of Southwest Key employees still at the hotel.
Cecila Tores, of Anaheim, and Elena Burguete, of Corona, said they drove three hours to attend the job fair. They were turned away and told to apply for available jobs online, even though all Ventura County-based positions had been removed from the website.
“It’s like a joke,” Tores said. “They say one thing and they do something else.”
Multiple people hired during the job fair reported being called days later and told all jobs at the Port Hueneme shelter were canceled, but there would be an opportunity to apply for similar positions at a future shelter for unaccompanied minors in Van Nuys within the next couple of months.
Casares said she had not been notified of a Southwest Key shelter opening in Van Nuys and the Administration for Children and Families does not identify the locations of its permanent shelters.