For five months, the young father waited for his three-year-old daughter’s release from federal custody after she crossed the US-Mexico border with her mother, hoping through delays for their safe reunion.

Only when he turned to the courts as a last resort did he learn that the girl had suffered alleged sexual abuse at the foster home where she had been placed after immigration officials separated her from her mother.

“She was so long in there,” said her father, who is a legal permanent resident in the United States. “I just think that if they would have moved faster, nothing like that would have happened.” He spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to prevent identifying his daughter as a victim of sexual abuse.

For months after the girl was placed in foster care, her father’s attempts to be reunited stalled as the government told him it couldn’t make an appointment to take his fingerprints.

During that time, according to court documents, the girl said she was sexually abused by an older child staying with her in foster care in Harlingen, Texas. A caregiver noticed the child’s underwear was on backward, according to the lawsuit. The girl then told the caregiver she was abused multiple times and it caused bleeding. Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) officials told the father that there had been an “accident” and his daughter would be examined, he told the AP in an interview.