Several nonprofit groups across the country are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a bid to restore funding tied to providing legal representation for roughly 26,000 unaccompanied children in the United States, days after the Trump administration moved to cancel such contracts.
The federal lawsuit announced Wednesday, March 26, was filed by the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, the primary contractor, and other subcontractors including Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) in Southern California.
Children, and adults, with immigration cases in the U.S. do not have a right to a government-funded attorney, unlike in criminal cases. Pro-bono legal aid services provided by organizations like ImmDef in Los Angeles serve as a “lifeline” to unaccompanied minors that come to the U.S. often fleeing persecution and other dangerous circumstances in their native country, according to ImmDef’s Directing Attorney Margaret Cargioli.
ImmDef serves more than 2,000 unaccompanied minors in the Los Angeles area, according to Renee Garcia, the organization’s communications director.
The Trump administration first moved to cut the contract in February. The administration reversed course days later.
This latest move by the Trump administration will, again, mean that children, some barely learning to talk, will be expected to represent themselves in immigration court.
Immigration law experts say the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) requires DHHS to ensure that all unaccompanied children have access to counsel ‘to the greatest extent practicable.’
“Congress has appropriated funds to do just that. The administration’s decision not to use those funds – and instead to strip tens of thousands of unaccompanied children of their legal representation – is a far cry from the TVPRA’s mandate to provide counsel to the greatest extent practicable,” said Center for Immigration Law and Policy Deputy Director Talia Inlender.
“The language provides some wiggle room for how an Administration goes about “to the greatest extent practicable” providing counsel,” said Niels Frenzen, co-director of USC’s Immigration Clinic.
Frenzen added that this abrupt move “is certainly a violation of the spirit of the TVPRA’s mandate to provide counsel to vulnerable children.”
“It quite literally is going to strip the right of a child to have an attorney standing by their side in front of an immigration judge. And anyone with a heart can understand the importance of needing to have an attorney by one’s side as a child when confronting a legal system,” Cargioli said. “Aside from the complex nature of immigration system, there’s just a basic human notion that children would need to have someone that they trust to share, confidential and serious information that could help their case… in the short term and long-term is just hugely catastrophic for the right of the child to have access to council.”
Other long-term effects will likely include greater numbers of unaccompanied children being forced to navigate immigration court on their own, deportations, denials of relief without due process, and delays in the immigration system, according to a news release on the lawsuit from ImmDef.
A copy of the termination letter obtained by The Associated Press said the contract was being ended “for the Government’s convenience.”
“It’s a cruel measure to take against vulnerable human beings,” Cargioli said.
DHHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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