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Honduran teen tells of abuse, isolation at detention center

In this photo taken Friday, June 22, 2018, an 18-year-old Honduran who said he suffered abuse inside a Virginia immigration detention facility poses in front of a window in San Francisco. The teens experience echoes abuse claims by other children whose accounts are included in a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that guards at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Staunton, Virginia, beat them, locked them up for long periods in solitary confinement and left them nude and shivering in concrete cells. (Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
By Garance Burke Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO – A Honduran teen is describing being beaten and deprived of food inside a youth immigration detention center in the mountains of Virginia.

The young immigrant says he was strip searched and placed in solitary confinement after arriving at age 16 to Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in the summer of 2016.

Now 18 and living in California, the teen spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared the government might retaliate against him for speaking out.

His firsthand account echoes abuse claims by other children included in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the facility.

Shenandoah’s executive director has said that an internal investigation concluded that the incidents the lawsuit describes were unfounded. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has ordered two state agencies to investigate the facility.