A two-story house sits on a quiet residential street in San Diego County.
A bottle of light brown nail polish bakes in the sun beside the mailbox, with the words Color Craze printed in a fun, swirly font. Four small cartons of unopened Suncup juices—orange, grape, and apple—also lie in the dirt.
Nine signs alert passersby to stay away with messages like “Warning: Security Cameras In Use” and “No Trespassing.” It’s July 4, just before 4:00 in the afternoon, and two white minivans pull into the driveway and drop off at least six girls, who appear to range in age from 7 to 14, all wearing red shirts. The vans park in front of a side door and the girls quickly stream into the house.
“¡Gracias!” one calls to a chaperone, who declines to comment except to confirm that she had taken the girls on a field trip to celebrate Independence Day. She refers questions to Southwest Key, the same nonprofit that runs the Walmart turned migrant detention facility in Brownsville, Texas, for about 1,500 boys.
I couldn’t help wondering what the girls were told about the holiday, commemorating our country’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence stating that “all men are created equal.” As the Trump administration seeks to deter Central Americans from coming to the U.S. with his immigration crackdown, I’m curious to hear the girls’ thoughts about the holiday and how it felt to celebrate the day with a field trip.
But I can’t ask them any questions.
Inside that two-story house, where the white vans are parked, are the girls—among the ones the nation has been wondering about since the hashtag #WhereAreTheGirls spread across social media. As the Trump administration scrambles to comply with a court order to reunite nearly 3,000 migrant children with their parents by the end of the month, officials have kept the whereabouts of female migrant children shrouded in mystery, allowing journalists to view only the boys’ facilities.
When asked about the location of the girls at a press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said simply, “I don’t know.” She then added that she knew they were in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, to whom Homeland Security transfers most children within 72 hours.
This beige-colored house stands in stark contrast to some of the tent cities and cages where Central American children are kept in Texas. Yellow butterflies flit along a slope of sea figs leading up to the driveway. Mourning doves coo in the trees. A Zillow listing for the five-bedroom, three-bathroom house estimates the value of the property at nearly $900,000. Since 2006, the facility has been operated by Southwest Key. Critics have noted that the nonprofit has made $458 million in profit from detaining children.
Southwest Key declined to comment on the girls’ shelter or to let me inside. I found the house by cross-referencing publicly available documents and interviewing Southwest Key employees who spoke on condition of anonymity. Before it housed migrant children, the site was a group home for abused or neglected boys.
How many of the girls who are staying here were separated from their parents? Southwest Key has said that about 10 percent of the children at its 27 facilities in Arizona, California, and Texas fit that profile. The rest arrived at the border alone, classified as “unaccompanied.” Children who arrived with their parents but were separated from them at the border are now considered to fall under the same umbrella.
The Department of Health and Human Services has attributed its secrecy regarding its facilities for migrant minors to a need to “safeguard the privacy” of the children in its custody. But the girls’ three-level backyard—with lounge furniture, a swing set, a slide, and a basketball court—is clearly visible from the backyard of several neighbors. Both male and female residents of the neighborhood said they could see the girls playing games and doing exercises in the backyard.
Does this make the girls uncomfortable? Or are they just glad to have a view of the neighborhood, and of the sky? I don’t know. I can’t ask them.
Several neighbors have “No Parking” signs in front of their homes. Hollis Barber, 82, said he placed a “Tow-Away Zone” sign on his chain link fence because Border Patrol and unmarked vehicles visiting the girls often fill up the street and block his driveway.
“They take the girls somewhere, somewhere in the mornings,” he said. “And they come back in the evenings.”
Any of the girls who were separated from their parents must be reunited with them by the end of July. They will either need to be released or placed in family detention centers. If the latter option unfolds, they could be facing a downgrade in their living conditions. The Trump administration is planning to house families together in camps on military bases—a far cry from this large house.
I imagine that for a girl who misses her parents, such a downgrade might not be a downgrade at all. Perhaps the hardest part of all of this is being apart from mom and dad.
But I don’t know. I can’t speak to any of the girls.
Jean Guerrero is the Fronteras reporter for KPBS and the author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir.
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