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After a teen’s death, Texas cuts ties with a rural foster care facility, then gets a tongue-lashing from a federal judge

Heart Galleries, portraits of adoptable children, on display at the Child Protective Services office at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services in Austin on Nov. 14, 2019.

Portraits of adoptable children on display at the Child Protective Services office at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services in Austin on Nov. 14, 2019.

Credit: Eddie Gaspar

Texas officials will no longer send foster children to live at a rural facility where a teen girl died this spring in what a federal judge described as an apparently “avoidable death.”

The decision by child welfare officials to cut ties with the Prairie Harbor residential treatment center in Wallis came to light Thursday during the first day of a two-day hearing in which state officials argued that they had made significant progress toward reforms ordered by U.S. District Judge Janis Jack in a nearly decade-old class-action lawsuit brought by foster children.

An obviously skeptical Jack, who at one point quipped that she took state officials’ testimony “with a grain of salt,” threatened several times during the hearing to hold the state in contempt of court for not adequately implementing new policy.

The hearing comes nearly five years after Jack first ruled that Texas had violated long-term foster children’s constitutional rights by leaving them in unsafe homes and three months after court-appointed monitors published a scathing report arguing that state officials remained out of compliance, permitting the foster care system system to pose “substantial threats to children’s safety.”

The hearing is scheduled to continue Friday, and Jack is expected to decide whether to hold Texas child welfare officials in contempt of court, for the second time in less than a year.

On a video call sometimes interrupted by the pings of computer alerts and a hiccuping internet connection, Jack lobbed fiery questions at her iPad screen, such as why state officials hadn’t asked lawmakers more quickly for emergency funding to address systemic failures.

“I’m not understanding the state’s reluctance, and actually refusal, to abide by these orders,” Jack said. State witnesses used “circular speak” to avoid answering her questions, she said. And at one point she scolded Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jaime Masters for turning off her video camera, saying she wanted to make sure the commissioner was present.

State officials described their efforts as a work in progress and resisted the sweeping terms Jack used to criticize the system they oversee. But given the opportunity, they declined to name any perceived inaccuracies in the court-appointed monitors’ June report detailing 11 recent child deaths. At one point, Masters told the judge, “Your Honor, I’m concerned by what I’m hearing as well.”

Jack and attorney Paul Yetter, a partner with Yetter Coleman in Houston who represents more than 10,000 children in the class-action lawsuit brought against Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas’ health and human services leadership, paid particular attention to the death earlier this year of a 14-year-old girl, referred to as K.C.

On Feb. 8, K.C. woke shortly after 10:30 p.m. to use the restroom, according to the monitors’ summary of Prairie Harbor staff testimony. A staff member supervising the girl noticed that she limped but assumed it was because her leg was asleep.

The staff member heard the girl fall and found her collapsed on the bathroom floor, lying on her back. Over 10 minutes, the girl’s condition reportedly deteriorated and she lost consciousness, though she continued to breathe and had a pulse, according to the summary of staff testimony.

Staff waited to call 911 until 11:08 p.m., more than 30 minutes after K.C. had collapsed, the monitors wrote. K.C. was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital, and a forensic review found the cause was a pulmonary embolism associated with a deep blood clot in her right calf.

The court-appointed monitors described K.C. in their report as obese. She was approximately 5’3” and weighed just under 300 pounds, with medical records indicating she had high blood pressure and blood glucose levels. And they noted that daily progress notes signed by Prairie Harbor staff in the previous month documented the girl’s complaints of leg pain, but her last doctor’s appointment was in October 2019.

State officials said an investigation into K.C.’s death was ongoing. And they revealed during the hearing that they were terminating their contract with Prairie Harbor and would no longer place foster children in the residential treatment center, which caters to traumatized children with complex behavioral needs. State officials cited the facility more than 60 times for minimum standards violations between February 2017 and December 2019, according to the monitors’ report.

Jack said it was “unbelievable” that state officials had continued to place foster children at Prairie Harbor for up to seven months after K.C.’s death. And after officials testified that they had this week ceased placements there, Jack said that she discovered in a simple internet search that the home’s owner and executive director have a new facility in Corpus Christi that is poised to take new foster placements.

Prairie Harbor officials could not be reached for immediate comment on Thursday.

It is “stunning,” Jack said, that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission does not have “any stipulations that the owners of these facilities are not allowed to open under another name. That to me is also a problem that needs to be addressed.”

Children enter the foster care system after they are found to have suffered abuse or neglect at home. But Jack’s 2015 ruling, which state attorneys fought back against for years until it was ultimately weakened by an appeals court, found that foster children regularly become victims of sexual abuse and “often age out of care more damaged than when they entered.”

In November 2019, Jack held the state in contempt of court after a similarly fiery hearing for failing to comply with her orders. At the time, she made clear that based on initial information from the monitors, she no longer found the state’s child welfare agency “to be credible in any way.” She fined the state $150,000 at the time.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees Child Protective Services investigators as well as the privately run foster care system for children who are removed from their homes, also has been the subject of much recent legislative scrutiny.

During the 2017 legislative session, lawmakers poured an additional $500 million into the agency, boosting pay for case workers and hiring more.

But the Texas Legislature has not held any hearings during the coronavirus pandemic, which meant Jack’s hearing was the first in months to feature public testimony about oversight of the oft-maligned agency.

After her original ruling, Jack appointed the two monitors to serve as her eyes and ears, helping her to supervise the system for “an indefinite period of time.” Kevin Ryan, a former New Jersey commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, and Deborah Fowler, executive director of the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, have served in that capacity, drawing criticism from state attorneys who say they have charged “exorbitant” fees for their work.

In a recent legal filing, lawyers from the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is defending child welfare officials in the case, wrote that they had “taken tremendous strides” to comply with Jack’s order. The arguments made by the children’s attorneys, they wrote, paint “an incomplete picture” of the state’s efforts.

The hearing is scheduled to continue Friday morning.

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Gov. Greg Abbott considering putting Austin police under state control after budget cut

‘No more democracy for you, if I disagree with you’ says Texas GOP governor. GOP in Texas in favor of State dictatorship over cities and counties?
Austin police officers gathered on Interstate 35 to remove protesters from the highway. May 31, 2020.

Austin police officers gathered on Interstate 35 to remove protesters demonstrating against police brutality from the highway in May. Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders have criticized Austin officials’ decision to cut police department funding.

Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

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Gov. Greg Abbott is considering a legislative proposal that, if passed, would put the control of the Austin Police Department under state authority.

Texas’ governor tweeted Thursday that he was looking at a strategy that would stop major city officials’ efforts to shift resources away from police departments and into other social services. Austin became the first Texas city to approve cutting its police budget last month as calls rise to “defund police” during a revived movement against police brutality and racial injustice.

“This proposal for the state to takeover the Austin Police Department is one strategy I’m looking at,” Abbott tweeted. “We can’t let Austin’s defunding & disrespect for law enforcement to endanger the public & invite chaos like in Portland and Seattle.”

The potential legislation, sent to Abbott by former Texas House Representatives Terry Keel and Ron Wilson after Austin’s decision, would allow for a city with a population over 1 million and less than two police officers per 1,000 residents — a bucket Austin falls into — to have its police force consolidated with the Texas Department of Public Safety. The state’s law enforcement branch would take over the local police department and form a new entity if the governor decided there were “insufficient municipal resources being appropriated for public safety needs,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Texas Tribune.

The director of DPS would control operations of the new department, and the state’s Public Safety Commission, a five-member board that oversees DPS and is appointed by the governor, would decide its budget, said Keel, who is also a former Travis County sheriff. The money would then be taken from state sales revenue taxes usually sent to the city.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Diarrhoea and vomiting may be key sign of Covid in children – study

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Research suggests stomach trouble more predictive of virus in young people than a cough

Diarrhoea and vomiting could be an important sign of Covid-19 in children, researchers say, leading to calls for the official NHS list of symptoms to be updated.

The checklist for coronavirus in children currently includes just three symptoms: a high temperature, a new, continuous cough, and a loss or change to the sense of smell or taste. The latter was added to the list in May.

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US sanctions on ICC prosecutor unacceptable, says EU

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Fatou Bensouda was investigating whether US committed war crimes in Afghanistan

The European Union’s top diplomat has called for Washington to reverse its sanctions on the international criminal court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another member of the ICC, calling the measures “unacceptable and unprecedented”.

The US blacklisted Bensouda on Wednesday over her investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan, under sanctions authorised by Donald Trump in June that allow for asset freezes and travel bans.

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New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

“It seems like they are cutting corners everywhere,” said Alex Mayer, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. “It’s not a Lamborghini, it’s a $500 used car.”

Since Fisher’s companies embarked on construction of the Rio Grande fence, the Trump administration has awarded about $2 billion in federal contracts to the firms to build segments of the border wall in other locations.

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This story was published originally by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

It’s not a matter of if a privately built border fence along the shores of the Rio Grande will fail, it’s a matter of when, according to a new engineering report on the troubled project.

The report is one of two new studies set to be filed in federal court this week that found numerous deficiencies in the 3-mile border fence, built this year by North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel. The reports confirm earlier reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which found that segments of the structure were in danger of overturning due to extensive erosion if not fixed and properly maintained. Fisher dismissed the concerns as normal post-construction issues.

Donations that paid for part of the border fence are at the heart of an indictment against members of the We Build the Wall nonprofit, which raised more than $25 million to help President Donald Trump build a border wall.

Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, We Build the Wall founder Brian Kolfage and two others connected to the organization are accused of siphoning donor money to pay off personal debt and fund lavish lifestyles. All four, who face up to 20 years in prison on each of the two counts they face, have pleaded not guilty, and Bannon has called the charges a plot to stop border wall construction.

We Build the Wall, whose executive board is made up of influential immigration hard-liners like Bannon, Kris Kobach and Tom Tancredo, contributed $1.5 million of the cost of the $42 million private border fence project south of Mission, Texas.

Last year, the nonprofit also hired Fisher to build a half-mile fence segment in Sunland Park, New Mexico, outside El Paso.

Company president Tommy Fisher, a frequent guest on Fox News, had called the Rio Grande fence the “Lamborghini” of border walls and bragged that his company’s methods could help Trump reach his Election Day goal of about 500 new miles of barriers along the southern border.

Instead, one engineer who reviewed the two reports on behalf of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune likened Fisher’s fence to a used Toyota Yaris.

“It seems like they are cutting corners everywhere,” said Alex Mayer, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. “It’s not a Lamborghini, it’s a $500 used car.”

Since Fisher’s companies embarked on construction of the Rio Grande fence, the Trump administration has awarded about $2 billion in federal contracts to the firms to build segments of the border wall in other locations.

Fisher agreed to the inspection as part of ongoing lawsuits against Fisher Sand and Gravel filed last year by the National Butterfly Center and the International Boundary and Water Commission. They unsuccessfully sought to convince a federal judge to stop the construction of the project until the potential impacts of the wall on the Rio Grande could be determined.

Mark Tompkins, an environmental engineer hired by the wildlife refuge, noted in his report that widespread erosion and scouring occurred after heavy rain events such as Hurricane Hanna in July, but that the fence has yet to experience a flood of the Rio Grande.

“Fisher Industries’ private bollard fence will fail during extreme high flow events,” concluded Tompkins, who specializes in river management.

“When extreme flow events, laden with sediment and debris, completely undermine the foundation of the fence and create a flow path under the fence or cause a segment of the fence to topple into the river, unpredictable and damaging hydraulics will occur,” he added in an affidavit to be filed in court.

Experts have said the fence will face a never-ending battle with erosion given its proximity to the water and the sandy, silty material of the banks. In the Rio Grande Valley, the federal government usually builds sections of the wall miles inland on top of existing levees, partly due to erosion concerns.

A second report, based on a geotechnical and structural inspection by the Millennium Engineers Group of Pharr, Texas, also hired by the National Butterfly Center, found that the fence was stable for now, but that it faces a host of issues. They include soil erosion on the river side—in some areas gaps up to three feet wide and waist deep, concrete cracking, construction flaws and what the firm concluded was likely substandard construction material below the fence’s foundation.

The Millennium engineers called for a clay covering to protect the embankment from erosion, as well as closely monitoring the project.

Its conclusion: “The geography at the wall’s construction location in comparison to the river bend is not at a favorable location for long-term performance.”

According to a copy of an operation and maintenance plan, Fisher Sand and Gravel plans quarterly inspections of the fence as well as extra checkups after large storms. The company had also said it would plant grasses that better hold in place the sandy riverbank and add a layer of rocks to lessen erosion. New soil will also be “treated and seeded” to help fill ground cover.

Tompkins called the maintenance plan “completely inadequate” and a “haphazard and unprofessional approach to long-term maintenance.”

Tommy Fisher said Tuesday that he couldn’t comment on the reports because he hadn’t reviewed them. But he added that his company has fixed all of the erosion, in part by adding a 10-foot-wide road made out of rocks for the Border Patrol to drive over that his crew considered big enough so it wouldn’t be as easily displaced. He estimates it will cost up to $150,000.

“Bottom line, if you want border security on the border you have to think outside the box,” he said. “I feel very comfortable with what we’ve done.”

In July, Fisher appeared on a podcast hosted by Bannon, who called Fisher “kind of a mentor” who “taught me really about how you actually have to build a wall.”

Asked about the engineering concerns, which Bannon said were part of a “hit piece,” Fisher called them “absolutely nonsense.”

“I would invite any of these engineers that so-called said this was gonna fall over, I’ll meet ‘em there next week…If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you probably shouldn’t start talking,” he said. “It’s working unbelievably well. There’s a little erosion maintenance we have to maintain.”

But to experts, Fisher’s planned fixes are inadequate.

“To me, it’s almost like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,” said Adriana E. Martinez, a Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor and geomorphologist who reviewed the reports on behalf of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

Officials with the International Boundary Commission have said that they too have found “significant erosion,” but spokeswoman Sally Spener said she couldn’t elaborate on that or on mitigation plans due to pending litigation. The binational body regulates building in the floodplain between the U.S. and Mexico because structures can worsen flooding and alter the course of the river, potentially violating international water treaties.

The Mexican section of the commission has said it worries the wall could obstruct the river’s flow or be knocked down by the force of the water, according to Spener.

Trump tried to distance himself from the private fence after the ProPublica/Tribune stories, saying that he had never agreed with it and that it had been done to make him look bad. He again distanced himself from the project and We Build the Wall after the charges against Bannon and the others.

“When I read about it, I didn’t like it,” he said. “It was showboating and maybe looking for funds. But you’ll have to see what happens.”

Last November, We Build the Wall representatives met with Customs and Border Protection officials about donating the group’s first border wall project—a half-mile fence in Sunland Park, New Mexico, just outside El Paso. According to a memo obtained by The Nation, CBP called it an “overall positive meet and greet.”

But the federal agency identified several areas of concern with the Sunland Park project, including the possibility that it would require an environmental assessment, but also the fact that Fisher Industries had inflated the speed with which it could complete the project.

“Their performance on this small project shows that some claims may have been inflated due to lack of experience with this type of work,” the memo states.

Fisher has said he wants to donate the Rio Grande fence to the federal government as well, although it’s unclear whether the government will take it. The fence likely will come with a hefty tax bill if not donated, after Hidalgo County recently appraised the land’s value at more than $20 million, which Fisher said his company will fight.

The next court hearing regarding the pending federal lawsuits is scheduled for Sept. 10.