独家报道：殴打、拘禁与隔离：移民儿童收容所虐待指控引发联邦审查

Exclusive: Beatings, restraints and isolation: Allegations of abuse at a migrant children’s shelter trigger federal review

2026-04-16T09:00:55.312Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/16/politics/migrant-children-shelter-abuse-allegations

A facility in New York that housed migrant children faces allegations of physical abuse, including placing some children in isolation in a so-called “red room,” according to multiple sources who spoke with CNN about what’s unfolded at the shelter.

The accounts from federal sources and child welfare experts describe a heavy-handed approach to punishment for potential behavioral issues in recent years, prompting an internal review by the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is charged with the care of migrant children, according to two of the sources.

The shelter, called the Children’s Village, has multiple locations across New York serving kids, including US citizens, though the abuse allegations stem from their treatment of migrant children at the Dobbs Ferry location. The Children’s Village has served unaccompanied migrant children since 2004.

Children were allegedly beaten by a “special” unit, akin to a security team, including at times, out of the view of cameras. They were also allegedly held in restraints for several minutes, beyond protocol in place to ensure safety. Children were also involuntarily taken to a room as punishment, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The federal government has long funded shelters, like the Children’s Village to care for migrant children who crossed the US-Mexico border alone — or more recently, been swept up in an interior immigration enforcement operation — until they can be reunited with a US-based sponsor, like a parent.

Over the last year, the Trump administration has made it harder for parents and guardians to retrieve their children from government custody and directed federal agents to ask migrant teens whether they want to voluntarily depart the country.

Issues at the Children’s Village, however, appear to pre-date the Trump administration — and persisted in recent months.

CNN relied on multiple sources, including internal federal agency documents, as well as child welfare experts, current and former HHS officials, and sources familiar with the Children’s Village to document the allegations levied against the shelter.

In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for the Children’s Village said: “We have zero tolerance for any form of punishment.”

“All teens in our care deserve the highest level of care, support, and professionalism from every adult responsible for their well-being. Allegations of employee misconduct are deeply distressing, and if received, we make an immediate report to the authorities. We will take all necessary steps to ensure that any staff member found to have engaged in misconduct is addressed appropriately and without hesitation,” the spokesperson added.

The shelter, which has housed hundreds of migrant children aged 12 and up over the years, stopped receiving kids in late January — and those who were in their care have been moved elsewhere — over “significant child welfare concerns,” according to an internal HHS document reviewed by CNN.

One teen who was transferred to another facility recalled spending four days alone in what he described as a “red room” with a red light and no door, according to an account shared with a shelter clinician in early January and reviewed by CNN .

Over those four days, the teen said he didn’t bathe and was only provided bread for food. The boy said the room was located near the shelter’s security staff office, so personnel could monitor him while he was confined to the room.

The teen also recalled a so-called “special” unit that would swoop in when fights occurred or restraints were required. He said he was thrown to the floor and hit, as well as placed in restraints, nearly two dozen times.

In a statement to CNN, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the Office of Refugee Resettlement “takes all allegations of misconduct involving children in its care extremely seriously.”

“Upon receiving an allegation related to this facility, ORR acted immediately to transfer all unaccompanied children to other locations and referred the matter to the appropriate federal investigative authorities. The safety and well-being of children in ORR care is a top priority, and any credible concerns are addressed swiftly and thoroughly,” Nixon added.

According to child welfare experts, multiple teens housed in the facility have shared similar experiences about the “special” unit. Concerns over that team’s response — which allegedly involved physical abuse — were raised to New York authorities in recent years, two sources said.

Unaccompanied minors who crossed the Southern border may soon lose critical legal service

3:40 • Source: CNN

A source familiar with the Children’s Village said that the shelter received minors last year with acute behavioral issues from other ORR providers, and they sometimes required physical interventions, arguing that it was for their safety and that of others. The same source said that as of late 2025, external monitors that reviewed one of the Children’s Village immigrant programs reported that kids felt safe and secure.

The shelter has program staff who work with children and supervise them and separately security staff who roam the campus and are called in if there’s a fight or altercation or if a child is behaving in an aggressive manner. The allegations shared with CNN were primarily against the security staff, also referred to as the “special” team.

Other children were also held in what kids called the “red room,” but was known among staff as the “crisis room,” and held there for hours as punishment for behavior, according to another source familiar with Children’s Village.

New York regulations allow for so-called “de-escalation rooms” to “assist in calming a child’s escalating behavior” but not as a form of punishment. A child needs to consent in order to be placed in a de-escalation room. Sources say the “red room” at the Children’s Village was not voluntary.

Sources described the “red room,” as it was informally known, as a tight space that got its name from the red floor and red carpet lining the walls. There is a singular overhead light and no door. There is nothing else in the room.

“It sounds like real abuse,” one of the sources said. “If a kid was subjected to that in their home, not allowed to shower, kept in a confined space for that long, they’d be considered to be in an abusive situation.”

Neha Desai, managing director of Children’s Human Rights & Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, told CNN her team spoke with children at Children’s Village in 2019 who also reported alleged abuse, physical restraints and use of a “red room.”

“One youth described a ‘special unit’ of men who came in when children were ‘behaving badly.’ The youth told us he saw the men in this unit throwing children against the wall,” she said, adding that another boy described “being physically restrained by the ‘special unit’” and taken to the “red room.”

Complaints have been submitted with the New York State Justice Center over conditions at the Children’s Village in recent years, according to child welfare experts. Some of the teens who had been housed at the facility have been contacted by authorities with the Justice Center in recent weeks, according to those experts .

One of the sources familiar with the Children’s Village similarly told CNN that as a form of oversight, the shelter reports allegations of staff misconduct toward kids to ORR and the New York State Justice Center.

The New York State Justice Center, which receives reports of abuse and neglect, declined to comment specifically on what reports its received but told CNN in a statement that “The Children’s Village is within the Justice Center’s jurisdiction,” but that “specific information on investigation findings would require” a record request.

CNN also submitted a record request.

Founded in 1851, the Children’s Village provides services for children in need in New York as well as migrant children who arrived in the US without a guardian, according to its website.

The facility offers standard care for migrant children, including a therapeutic group home for children struggling with mental health, as well as a category known as heightened supervision, which also includes teenage boys whose history, like a previous run in with law enforcement, or current behavior requires additional supervision by staff.

The Dobbs Ferry location is laid out like a campus with dozens of cottages serving a variety of programs and children, including US citizen kids. The campus includes a recreation center, a medical clinic, a chapel and a school. There are 18 cottages assigned to migrant children and around 17 cottages assigned for US citizen kids who may be there for a number of reasons, including kids in foster care and those needing a secure residential setting given their history, according to the source familiar with the Children’s Village.

There were around 50 migrant children or fewer at the facility over the last year. The Children’s Village can accommodate 187 migrant children.

According to ORR, heightened supervision facilities “maintain stricter security measures than a shelter, include close staff supervision, and extra support.” The allegations about the treatment of teenage boys at the Children’s Village appear to largely be about their time in the heightened supervision facility.

The kids at the facility are a mix of those who arrived at the US-Mexico border alone or as a result of an interior enforcement action where their sponsor was detained without them — a phenomenon that has happened more frequently under the Trump administration’s latest crackdown.

The kids have usually experienced a type of trauma and are in custody for a prolonged period.

“They might be acting out for a variety of reasons and sometimes staff will interpret it as threatening when in fact it could be mental health issues or frustration about their situation,” a former Health and Human Services official told CNN.

“You start with a fraught position where it’s not even clear that some of the kids in those facilities should be in them and the more closed nature of it could create potential problems,” they added.

Mark Greenberg, a former senior Health and Human Services official, said there are a set of core requirements that should apply to all child migrant facilities.

“They have behavior management strategies, that they’re trauma informed, that they don’t use or threaten corporal punishment. That they do not use seclusion, except on an emergency basis and only that they don’t use personal restraints except on an emergency basis,” he said.

Greenberg noted that any allegations of physical abuse are particularly concerning.

“There should not be beatings under any circumstances. That’s clear and not going to vary on the nature of the facility,” Greenberg added. “This sounds extreme and deeply disturbing and not something that’s supposed to happen,” Greenberg said of the Children’s Village allegations.

ORR funds 171 facilities and programs across 24 states for the care of unaccompanied children until they can be placed with a so-called sponsor, like a parent or relative. The facilities are not designed for long-term stays, but amid a spate of new restrictions that have made it harder for kids to be released to sponsors, children are remaining in custody for weeks, if not months.

There were 2,173 migrant children in HHS custody in March, according to the latest available federal figures. The average length of stay at a facility in fiscal year 2025 was 117 days, according to federal data, up threefold from the year prior.

A 2019 HHS inspector general report stated the Children’s Village received $16.7 million in federal funds for the care and placement of nearly 500 children when the HHS conducted its review.

That report, which was part of a broader review of ORR facilities, found “potentially harmful conditions,” like unsanitary conditions in some bathrooms and accessibility to harmful cleaning products, and concerns over the use of federal funds. The Children’s Village disagreed with many of the findings in the inspector general’s report but agreed to take corrective actions.

An ad-hoc monitoring visit conducted in January by federal officials revealed “significant child welfare concerns” that were elevated to ORR, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The visit was prompted by an unaccompanied minor who, after being moved to another placement, reported abuse.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement officials launched a project to assess the scope of incidents at the facility, according to an HHS official.

“As part of its oversight work, ORR can run checks of significant incident reports to figure out how frequently a situation has happened and at which providers. It would be situation dependent, but certainly that would be done when there was a complaint about a specific provider,” said Jen Smyers, a former ORR deputy director who served under former President Joe Biden.