More than 20,000 unaccompanied children are set to lose legal representation after the federal government ends a major contract on July 31, triggering a cascade of layoffs and closures among legal aid organizations nationwide.
The Trump administration has severed relationships with nearly 100 legal organizations across the country that provide immigration assistance. Federal officials have also refused to reimburse service providers for $65 million in work completed since December, according to Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, which administers legal services for these children.
The government's reimbursement demand comes with a catch: organizations must agree to hand over sensitive client information, including unredacted medical evaluations and immigration case details. Aber warned that such disclosures could become a blueprint for mass deportation. "These sorts of detailed disclosures could provide the government with, really, a roadmap for mass deportation of children," she said.
The financial squeeze is already causing damage. Kids in Need of Defense, the organization founded by actor Angelina Jolie and Microsoft, announced last month it was pulling out as a subcontractor due to $20 million in overdue payments. Texas legal providers with decades of experience representing immigrant youth face imminent closure.
Without an attorney, children win the right to remain in the US less than 10 percent of the time. Immigration judges are nearly 100 times less likely to grant relief to unrepresented minors, according to Elizabeth Young, a former regional deputy chief immigration judge who resigned last year.
"When children are forced to navigate one of the most complex areas of law alone, that promise of fairness becomes little more than an illusion," Young said.
Many of these children fled trafficking, persecution, abuse or abandonment. Federal law was designed to protect some of the world's most vulnerable minors by ensuring their cases received careful legal review. That framework is now being dismantled to accelerate deportations, critics say.
Separate reporting indicates federal officials are planning to send unaccompanied children en masse to Texas, where immigration courts and state leadership are generally aligned with the administration's anti-immigrant stance. When federal officials first approached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump ally, for help representing the children, he declined. Officials then turned to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, a small state agency designed for criminal defense work, not civil immigration cases. The commission's executive director, Scott Ehlers, told them the request would likely violate his mandate.
Ana Devereaux, senior managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, framed the situation as intentional policy. "The Trump administration is working to strip unaccompanied children of legal representation so they can be deported faster and with less scrutiny," she said.
Aber warned that the damage extends beyond July 31. "And that's happening right now, even before the contract expires. So the damage is already being felt, and I assume that we're going to see hundreds and hundreds of children going to court alone," she said.
Author James Rodriguez: "This is a deliberate policy choice dressed up as budget realism, and it leaves vulnerable kids as collateral damage in a deportation push."
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