2 runaways returned to Oracle’s Sycamore Canyon Academy

The Pinal County Sheriff’s office responded to a call at approximately 1 a.m. on Saturday, August 23, from the Sycamore Canyon Academy in regards to two juveniles, who had run away from the facility.

A deputy returned them safely to the facility later that same morning.

According to a hunter, who talked to the two runaways Saturday morning, the boys ran away because things at the Academy have been out of control there since the addition of unaccompanied alien children.

The addition of reportedly 40 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) at the Sycamore Canyon Academy has become a polarizing issue in Pinal County. The residents of Oracle, located in southern Pinal County, became the focus of national attention when they protested the federal government’s decision to settle UACs in their resource strapped community.

Last week, at a meeting of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Pete Rios, berated the residents of Oracle for their concerns. Rios, an open border advocate, has been supported by Arizona Attorney General candidate Mark Brnovich, who was a lobbyist for the private prison industry. That industry, and the companies which comprise it such as Rite of Passage; the owner operator of Sycamore Canyon Academy, stand to make considerable money with the arrival of the UACs.

While claiming to know nothing about the UACs at Sycamore, Rios stated that Health and Human Services is trying to find places for the UACs, and is employing sites such as the Rite of Passage facilities, across the state, including Sycamore “for purposes of processing these children prior to reuniting them with family members in the states or to their country of origin.”

Rios continued his rambling assault on residents and defense of the private correctional facility. Rios said that the concerns about the minors being members of MS-13 were wrong; instead he argued that “some of these children that are being sent to this country as refugees, by their parents. Yes, they are; because they fear that these gang members are going to force their kids to join those things, and for some time that is one of the reasons why we’ve experienced what we discussed roughly a month ago when all these children, accompanied by a cartels, were crossing the Rio Grande in Texas.” Rios said, he understood that the minors would be staying at the Academy for “21 days for processing, and finding family members, so that they can be with them. So, I just want to address that we don’t need what happened on July 15. We are not Murrieta, California. We don’t need those kinds of ugly scenes.”

The Academy is an unfenced compound run by Rite of Passage out of Nevada. Rite of Passage operates several “reform” facilities in the state of Arizona and according to officials documents, recently applied for increased capacity at many of its sites. Many of the residents, including Skiba have asked why the government would send children, who are not known to have been convicted of crimes, to be housed with children who have been adjudicated though various states’ juvenile justice systems as the minors at Sycamore have been. Several states send their juvenile offenders to Sycamore.

The residents of Oracle have been victimized by the juveniles housed at the Academy for years. One community leader Cyrus Miller is working with Skiba, and resident Ron Thompson, a retired law enforcement officer to organize a neighborhood watch. Miller tells of his father’s experience with a runaway from the Academy several years or so ago. According to Miller, one Sycamore minor used his father’s parked RV for shelter for 4 or 5 days before anyone in the community even knew that he had run away.

 

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