The Trump administration has not complied with a federal court order directing it to continue funding legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children, attorneys in the case allege.
Several groups sued the Department of Homeland Security on March 28 after the federal government refused to renew a contract that funds attorneys who help young migrant children who came to the United States alone or were separated from their parents go through the immigration process.
The funding cutoff forced many of the immigrant legal groups to lay off workers, withdraw from cases and scramble to find other legal help for children in immigration court proceedings.
According to a court document filed by the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, "the sudden and abrupt termination of services, without any warning or advance notice to children, their attorneys, Child Advocates, and immigration judges and court personnel, created chaos and confusion in immigration courts."
In the two weeks since the funding for legal representation ended, advocates from the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights saw children as young as 5 sitting at tables alone facing judges, according to the document. They also saw a 14-year-old child break down in tears in a court lobby when she learned she had to stand alone in court without a lawyer.
Judges first learned children would not have attorneys when they arrived at court in the days after the cutoff, the center said.
In some cases, judges directed questions at government workers, including case managers, people who transport children and others who are not trained to handle such cases.
In one hearing, the judge failed to request an interpreter, despite the presence of many non-English-speaking children, according to the document. At another hearing, the child did not understand the complex proceedings, despite the presence of a Spanish interpreter, who at one point translated the judge’s instructions incorrectly, the center said in its filing.
The center is an independent group of child advocates appointed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which ended the contract.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin, based in California’s Northern District, had granted a temporary restraining order on April 1. The order should have kept the federal money flowing to the groups while legal proceedings continued.
Since the order was issued, Trump administration lawyers have filed a motion to dissolve the order, asked for a speedy hearing on the motion, filed a motion to have the judge remove herself from the case, appealed the court order and renewed their motion for dissolution of the order, attorneys for the groups that sued DHS said in a court filing.
“What defendants have not done is comply in any way with the TRO,” attorneys for the groups wrote in a court filing, referring to the judge's order. The lawsuit had been filed by the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and the Justice Action Center.
Trump lawyers have “brazenly” asked the court to stay the order to continue funding, “with which they have done nothing to comply,” the attorneys said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a court filing opposing the order to continue funding the groups helping unaccompanied children, the Trump administration pointed to a Supreme Court ruling on April 4 voiding a temporary restraining order that required the government to reinstate $65 million in grants to recruit and train teachers. The government had ended them as part of its elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Helping a victim of sex trafficking
The Young Center said in its affidavit that without the federal funding, most children will not be able to find pro bono representation.
It gave the example in the filing of a boy it identified as Angel, who had been sexually abused by a staff member at an Office of Refugee Resettlement facility where he had been held. The boy disclosed to his attorney that he had been a victim of sex trafficking previously and fled to the United States to escape the traffickers.
Attorneys and the children’s immigration advocate got Angel placed in another program; his attorney filed a request for asylum for him, helped him report the abuse at the facility to police and gave details of the child’s sex trafficking to Homeland Security Investigations, the affidavit said.
“No child should have to navigate complex immigration proceedings on their own,” the center said.
The administration’s resistance against judicial orders has escalated into a showdown in the case of a Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the administration previously said was deported to an El Salvador prison by mistake. In a separate case, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington issued an order Wednesday saying he has found probable cause to hold the government in contempt for failing to obey his order to put deportations under the Alien Enemies Act on hold.
Only about 1 in 5 of the estimated 118,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in the United States have legal representation. Even before the funding cutoff, many were showing up in court alone or showed up with parents, guardians or siblings who might not speak English or were not likely to have much more of an understanding of the language themselves, advocacy groups have said.
“In those cases where children have been able to obtain immigration relief, legal representation has meant the difference between living in safety in the United States or being returned to a country where they may face danger and physical harm, including trafficking and persecution,” the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights said in its court filing. The Acacia Center for Justice, a group whose contract with the government was not renewed, had subcontracted to more than 100 groups around the country to provide legal help to about 26,000 unaccompanied children.
Acacia Center Executive Director Michael Lukens said in an interview that "no child chooses to make an incredibly dangerous journey willy-nilly; these children are fleeing horrific conditions in their home countries. They are often survivors of violence, often severely traumatized. ... To attack them for political points is atrocious.”
“I have 10- and 8-year-olds, and if I told them go to court alone, I’d be laughed at,” Lukens said. “You can barely get them to brush their teeth.”
