Inspector general reports often are tediously dull and non-revealing, but the faithful reader is sometimes rewarded with little black-out mysteries and is sort of encouraged to fill in the missing pieces.
This one by the DHS IG deals with charges that some of the Central American illegals detained at the Karnes City, Texas, "rent-a-jail" facility had been sexually abused by the contracting staff — the facility is run by the GEO Group. I quote:
Review of video footage revealed that two [REDACTED] Detention Officers were engaged in a romantic relationship with each other and had engaged in inappropriate physical contact in the laundry room area while on duty. When presented with this information, Federal and State prosecutors concluded that no violation of Federal or State statute had occurred. Both employees [REDACTED] after being interviewed.
OK — so the only hanky-panky the IG could find was apparently consensual, between citizens (or at least between contract employees), and it showed that laundry room facilities were not being totally wasted during the long night hours in the detention center.
And no illegals were being abused by the guards (or at least no one admitted any such activity) and if something was amiss it was not done by the feds! I suppose one could leave it there with a big sigh of relief, but two comments beg to be made:
First, what words were redacted by the ultra-cautious IG people (or perhaps by DHS censors) in the two locations in that paragraph? Nature (and bloggers) hate a vacuum, so here are some possibilities of what might have been hidden by the first redaction:
- "White" or "Hispanic" or "Texan". One would not want to be overly precise about such things. Or
- "Female" or "male". Heaven forbid that any consensual same-sex contact was taking place in a government-provided facility! Or
- "Karnes City" or "GEO" or "contract", or something equally bland.
The possibilities for the second redaction — the space is a bit longer than the first, are even more fun. How about
- "were still holding hands". Or
- "were reprimanded". Or, more likely,>
- "were terminated".
If the IG was not going to name any names, why could he at least let us know what happened to those skylarking contract employees?
Second, we should not forget the complete waste of hundreds of hours investigating this on-site behavior, on the investigations, on writing the report, and on the redactions.
If DHS were simply following the law and shipping the illegals straight back to Central America — as it sends comparable Mexican Nationals back to Mexico — then none of this would be necessary.