A 1-year-old boy and his 17-year-old mother — herself classified as an unaccompanied minor — appeared before an Arizona immigration judge last month without legal representation. A representative from the government’s replacement legal provider was present but did not speak during the hearing, according to KJZZ, the Phoenix public radio station that reported on the case. At a follow-up hearing in late August, the pair were given a deadline to file an asylum claim themselves or face deportation.
Their case is not isolated. Across the country, unaccompanied immigrant children are being called to immigration court every 14 to 21 days without attorneys, and some have been ordered deported for failing to file asylum applications on their own — complex legal paperwork that trained immigration lawyers ordinarily prepare.
Congress mandated the program nearly two decades ago
The federal legal aid system for unaccompanied children traces to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which requires the government to provide legal representation to children placed in deportation proceedings. For years, that mandate was carried out through a roughly $200 million annual contract with more than 80 nonprofit legal organizations.
On July 31, the Trump administration let that contract expire. The nonprofits had refused to comply with government demands to share confidential information about the children they represented — information their attorneys said was covered by attorney-client privilege.
“We certainly are not in a position to break that confidence, either legally or ethically or morally. But we certainly aren’t looking to share that information with an administration who has shown that their Number 1 priority is to remove these children as quickly as possible,” Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu, deputy director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, told KJZZ in August.
About 1,800 children remain in federal government shelters, and roughly 22,000 more facing deportation are living with outside sponsors such as family members, the Associated Press reported.
The replacements
The administration handed a $20 million contract through December to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). But USCRI has only 57 attorneys on staff nationally, according to court filings cited by KJZZ. At hearings that KJZZ reporters observed in late August and September, USCRI attorneys appeared solely as “Friends of Court” — a role that lets them advise a judge on details like a child’s language but does not allow them to file motions or legal documents on a child’s behalf.
“Across the country, we are seeing children being asked to go to court every 14-21 days alone,” Avila-Cimpeanu said at a press conference this week. “We are seeing children being ordered deported for not filing an asylum application by themselves in a short timeframe.”
The administration also awarded a no-bid $158 million contract to Our Rescue, a Utah-based anti-trafficking organization previously known as Operation Underground Railroad, best known from the 2023 film Sound of Freedom. NPR reported it is unclear whether Our Rescue has immigration attorneys on its staff. The group’s founder, Tim Ballard, resigned in 2023 amid sexual misconduct allegations he has denied; its current CEO, Derek Benner, is a former senior official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“HHS is causing chaos in the system, and that may be on purpose,” Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, told NPR. “They let a contract expire. They don’t have any long term contract in place.”
Courts push back
A federal judge in California ordered the government last month to release roughly $65 million in withheld funds to the organizations whose contracts had expired. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin has also required both parties to submit additional evidence by the end of this month as she assesses whether the administration is meeting its legal obligations.
The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which represents about 600 children in Arizona, says it will continue that work without government payment for as long as its resources hold. It cannot, however, take on new clients.
“We’re going to see children who are eligible for relief … being deported to countries where they could face further harm or where they could even be killed,” Avila-Cimpeanu told KJZZ.