More than 25,000 children lose previous legal protections, as federal contract ends
News
An estimated 26,000 children who entered the U.S. without parents or guardians are expected to be left without independent legal representation as soon as Monday, according to lawyers who help represent them.
For more than two decades, the U.S. has been required by law to protect children who cross the border alone, because of fears that they could be easily exploited, abused or trafficked. After children cross the border unaccompanied, they are typically transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). A network of nearly 100 legal groups helps provide children who arrive in ORR custody with legal services, funded by Congress.
But in November, ORR stopped paying for those legal services, after lawyers refused to provide the agency with confidential information it had requested about the children. The attorneys say that information is covered by attorney-client privilege.
Details
“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,” Acacia Center for Justice, the nonprofit that manages the legal services contract with ORR, said in a statement on Thursday.
ORR refused to renew the contract with the network of legal providers, which expired Friday.
Alexa Sendukas, an attorney at the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, one of the organizations that provides legal help to migrant children, said that come Monday, the children may have to represent themselves in court and that most who would have to do that would likely end up being deported.
Analysis
“We know that without a lawyer, unaccompanied children win the right to stay in the United States less than 1% of the time,” said Sendukas. “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 asking a judge to order the government to pay them for what it is owed — some $65 million — and continue paying them for more services. After going more than eight months without pay from ORR, some legal service providers have had to reduce their staff.
“Due to the loss of funding for children’s immigration work, ProBAR laid off more than 20% of its staff this week,” Lauren Fisher, the 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.
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