In the span of a couple of days, three immigrant teens ran away from a local shelter, Tucson police reports show.
On Oct. 6, police were called to Southwest Key on North Oracle Road about 5 p.m. after a report that two minors had jumped over a wall of the facility and fled.
Officers were dispatched to the facility the next day regarding another teen, who workers unsuccessfully tried to talk down from a fence before he, too, walked away from the facility, reports show.
All three minors had been apprehended by the Border Patrol, one of them on Sept. 30. They were not deemed a danger to themselves or to others, TPD’s reports said.
Southwest Key directs all calls related to the unaccompanied minors to the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the U.S. Health and Human Services department. A request for comment with the federal agency was not returned Friday.
On May 30, 2014, Southwest Key, which describes itself as the largest provider of shelter services to unaccompanied minors in the country, requested a permit to convert part of a studio-apartment complex into a shelter.
The opening of the Tucson shelter, near West Drachman Street, was an effort by the federal government to accommodate the influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the border.
Nearly 70,000 minors crossed the border alone last fiscal year. The numbers decreased this year, which ended on Sept. 30, but at more than 35,000, they were still higher than they had been in recent years. Most children come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Minors remain at the shelter on average of less than 35 days until they are reunited with their parents or sponsors in the United States to await the outcome of their case, officials say.
