Federal contract ends, leaving 26,000 migrant children without lawyers

Fewer than 1% win asylum without a lawyer, advocates say

An estimated 26,000 unaccompanied migrant children are expected to be without independent legal representation starting Monday after the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement allowed its contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which manages the legal-services network, to expire.

For more than two decades, U.S. law has required the government to protect children who cross the border alone, out of concern they could be exploited, abused or trafficked. The children are transferred to ORR custody, and Congress has funded a network of nearly 100 legal groups to provide them legal services.

But in November, ORR stopped paying those groups after the attorneys refused to provide what they describe as confidential information protected by attorney-client privilege. The Acacia Center for Justice, the nonprofit that manages the contract, said in a statement on Thursday, “The government is withholding payment for work that has already been performed in order to extract confidential information about kids, information the government has no right to.”

With the contract expired, attorneys said the children will likely have to represent themselves in immigration court. Alexa Sendukas, an attorney at the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said fewer than 1% of unaccompanied children win the right to stay in the United States without a lawyer.

“We know that without a lawyer, unaccompanied children win the right to stay in the United States less than 1% of the time,” Sendukas said. “And they’ve come to the United States seeking safety and protection. And what this administration is asking us to do now is to turn our backs on them completely. And they will undoubtedly be sent to harmful, dangerous situations. And I worry some will be killed if they lose their lawyers.”

A group of legal nonprofits filed a lawsuit last year seeking to force the government to pay about $65 million that they say is owed and to continue funding the services. After going more than eight months without pay from ORR, some providers have cut staff. Lauren Fisher, legal director of ProBAR, a project of the American Bar Association that provides legal services to children in ORR care, said in an emailed statement on July 31, “Due to the loss of funding for children’s immigration work, ProBAR laid off more than 20% of its staff this week.”

On July 29, Acacia received notice that ORR was considering a new contract, potentially with different legal providers, but the agency provided few details. Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel of Acacia said, “It is not clear who the new contractor will be. They have not answered the questions that we have put to them. And so there remains a lot of uncertainty and a great deal of concern.”

Nearly 1,800 children were in ORR custody in June, according to agency data, with an average stay of 194 days before being released to sponsors — a duration lawyers say is unusually long and has harmed the children.

Despite the funding halt, some attorneys said they will not abandon the children they already represent, citing ethical obligations. Mickey Donovan, director of legal services at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said, “We have an ethical responsibility. We can’t just drop a case. If you have a hearing tomorrow, we can’t just not show up because the government decided to stop paying us. So we’ll be there in court on Monday, to introduce ourselves to kids and try to do what we can to prevent their deportation.”

Neither ORR nor the White House responded to NPR’s requests for comment.