The federal government is withholding funding for legal representation and diverting it to dubious alternatives.
By Sonali Kolhatkar ,
PublishedAugust 14, 2026
Children wait outside of an immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on July 31, 2026, in New York City.Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
As part of its relentless project of mass deportation, the Trump administration has taken particularly brutal aim at the most vulnerable population of immigrants: children. If the federal government has its way, about 20,000 unaccompanied minors will soon face immigration court hearings without legal representation.
For decades, Congress has allocated funding for unaccompanied immigrant minors via the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as the result of the Flores Settlement, struck after a 1993 Supreme Court decision. That agreement — established in 1997 and still in effect — made it the federal government’s responsibility to ensure that unaccompanied children arriving in the U.S. are treated with a certain baseline of care.
The agreement was cemented under Republican President George W. Bush, who signed a 2008 bipartisan anti-trafficking bill into law and directed the federal government to ensure the care and safety of unaccompanied migrant children, including funding their legal representation.
During his first term, President Donald Trump aggressively targeted this and several other federal programs supporting unaccompanied migrant kids. When Trump took office for a second time in early 2025, he resumed those attacks by ending a contract with Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization that subcontracts with hundreds of legal advocates to represent children in immigration courts.
“The Trump administration really, from day one, tried to terminate this contract and the ability of children to have their legal rights understood, evaluated, and honored,” said Shaina Aber, Acacia’s executive director, in an interview. She added, “We still don’t have confirmation on what is going to be the government’s plan [going forward] for ensuring that children have the ability to meaningfully participate in their process and have their rights vindicated.”
While the contract termination is being challenged in court, ORR last December refused to reimburse Acacia for services already rendered. This means the organization is more than six months in arrears, unable to pay its subcontractors. “They come up with novel excuses every week for why they are not paying us,” said Aber.
Then, in July 2026, ORR announced it would not pay Acacia until the organization turned over confidential and sensitive data about its clients. According to NBC news, “ORR said it offered Acacia the opportunity to extend the contract if Acacia provides data about its clients and bills ORR when it submits applications for immigration relief.” This undermines the most basic tenet of legal representation: attorney-client privilege, effectively ensuring no lawyer will touch a case unless they want to risk being disbarred.
The Trump administration has also moved to strip funding for local shelters where unaccompanied migrant children are housed, and instead increased funding for migrant jails — such as the notorious Dilley detention center in Texas, where hundreds of children are held in horrific conditions.
Six years ago, an attorney from Colorado who goes by JG*, having had a life-threatening experience with pregnancy, decided to grow her family through fostering. She was granted custody of two unaccompanied minors from Guatemala through Lutheran Family Services. At the time, the two girls were 16 years old and had experienced neglect and abuse. One was found to have been trafficked and the other had survived serious sexual abuse.
“Our girls didn’t speak any English,” explained JG. “They weren’t familiar with any ways of living or the laws in the U.S. They certainly didn’t understand how they could even get any sort of status.” Although JG is an attorney, her specialty is not immigration law and she admitted that the intricacies of immigration law are beyond her expertise. “Had they been in a courtroom all by themselves, speaking Spanish, not English, and having it translated, there’s no way they would’ve understood what was happening,” she said.
When the two girls underwent their immigration proceedings, they were appointed a lawyer through the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, which is one of Acacia’s subcontractors. Given the abuse and neglect they had endured, both young women obtained approval for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which affords them legal residency in the U.S.
“They qualified immediately,” said JG. “We wouldn’t have had any idea what to look out for because we weren’t familiar [with the program], and we had to have a lawyer tell us what we needed to be looking for in order for there to be any sort of status.”
It’s precisely this sort of legal representation — and the outcomes it can offer — the Trump administration appears to be targeting in order to ensure swift deportation of children who would otherwise qualify for legal immigration status under U.S. laws.
“We’re seeing kids [being] told that they have to file an application for asylum within 15 days with no lawyer, and that it’s on them to get a lawyer.”
“We’re seeing them line up kids in a group of 40, push them forward to pleadings, and order them removed the same day,” said Aber of the current state of chaos in immigration courts. “We’re seeing kids [being] told that they have to file an application for asylum within 15 days with no lawyer, and that it’s on them to get a lawyer.”
Not only is the federal government withholding funding for legal representation that Congress allocated, it’s also diverting it into dubious alternatives. News broke in mid-August that ORR unexpectedly granted a Utah-based anti-trafficking nonprofit called Our Rescue more than $244 million in funding for a contract it never applied for to provide legal services for unaccompanied minors. The organization’s founder, who formerly worked at the Department of Homeland Security, had resigned from his position at the organization in 2023 after multiple women accused him of — ironically — trafficking and abuse.
Another $150 million in funding was granted — also reportedly without advance notice — to a small law firm in Texas whose founder served in the first Trump administration. The Houston-based Burke Law Group — which did not ask for the funding, and has only two lawyers of the 26 it employs with expertise in immigration law — has reportedly declined the government’s offer.
Meanwhile, hundreds of legal aid organizations with the expertise and capacity to represent unaccompanied minors have been stripped of funding. “Courtrooms are inhospitable to adults,” explained JG. “To put a child who has no idea of what a courtroom is, with a judge dressed in a robe and a bunch of lawyers speaking in a language that’s not adjusted for them is just cruel.”
She attributed the cruelty to racism. “The Trump administration is doing this as a result of our kids being Brown, and it’s easier to dehumanize a Brown kid than a white kid.” (Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, JG’s two foster daughters are still awaiting the legal residency they were approved for two years ago, and had to give up good jobs after their work permits expired.)
“What the government is trying to do right now is to deport as many kids as possible, even if they, under the law, should benefit from protection,” Aber said. She recommends people sign onto a petition demanding the restoration of funding.
“I’ve seen children who entered this country alone go on to become poets and teachers and doctors and cherished community members,” she said. “Every one of those kids had someone fighting in their corner. And that is what is at stake right now.”
* The name of the foster parent is being withheld to protect her identity and that of her foster children.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
As part of its relentless project of mass deportation, the Trump administration has taken particularly brutal aim at the most vulnerable population of immigrants: children. If the federal government has its way, about 20,000 unaccompanied minors will soon face immigration court hearings without legal representation.
For decades, Congress has allocated funding for unaccompanied immigrant minors via the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as the result of the Flores Settlement, struck after a 1993 Supreme Court decision. That agreement — established in 1997 and still in effect — made it the federal government’s responsibility to ensure that unaccompanied children arriving in the U.S. are treated with a certain baseline of care.
The agreement was cemented under Republican President George W. Bush, who signed a 2008 bipartisan anti-trafficking bill into law and directed the federal government to ensure the care and safety of unaccompanied migrant children, including funding their legal representation.
During his first term, President Donald Trump aggressively targeted this and several other federal programs supporting unaccompanied migrant kids. When Trump took office for a second time in early 2025, he resumed those attacks by ending a contract with Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization that subcontracts with hundreds of legal advocates to represent children in immigration courts.
“The Trump administration really, from day one, tried to terminate this contract and the ability of children to have their legal rights understood, evaluated, and honored,” said Shaina Aber, Acacia’s executive director, in an interview. She added, “We still don’t have confirmation on what is going to be the government’s plan [going forward] for ensuring that children have the ability to meaningfully participate in their process and have their rights vindicated.”
While the contract termination is being challenged in court, ORR last December refused to reimburse Acacia for services already rendered. This means the organization is more than six months in arrears, unable to pay its subcontractors. “They come up with novel excuses every week for why they are not paying us,” said Aber.
Then, in July 2026, ORR announced it would not pay Acacia until the organization turned over confidential and sensitive data about its clients. According to NBC news, “ORR said it offered Acacia the opportunity to extend the contract if Acacia provides data about its clients and bills ORR when it submits applications for immigration relief.” This undermines the most basic tenet of legal representation: attorney-client privilege, effectively ensuring no lawyer will touch a case unless they want to risk being disbarred.
The Trump administration has also moved to strip funding for local shelters where unaccompanied migrant children are housed, and instead increased funding for migrant jails — such as the notorious Dilley detention center in Texas, where hundreds of children are held in horrific conditions.
Six years ago, an attorney from Colorado who goes by JG*, having had a life-threatening experience with pregnancy, decided to grow her family through fostering. She was granted custody of two unaccompanied minors from Guatemala through Lutheran Family Services. At the time, the two girls were 16 years old and had experienced neglect and abuse. One was found to have been trafficked and the other had survived serious sexual abuse.
“Our girls didn’t speak any English,” explained JG. “They weren’t familiar with any ways of living or the laws in the U.S. They certainly didn’t understand how they could even get any sort of status.” Although JG is an attorney, her specialty is not immigration law and she admitted that the intricacies of immigration law are beyond her expertise. “Had they been in a courtroom all by themselves, speaking Spanish, not English, and having it translated, there’s no way they would’ve understood what was happening,” she said.
When the two girls underwent their immigration proceedings, they were appointed a lawyer through the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, which is one of Acacia’s subcontractors. Given the abuse and neglect they had endured, both young women obtained approval for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which affords them legal residency in the U.S.
“They qualified immediately,” said JG. “We wouldn’t have had any idea what to look out for because we weren’t familiar [with the program], and we had to have a lawyer tell us what we needed to be looking for in order for there to be any sort of status.”
It’s precisely this sort of legal representation — and the outcomes it can offer — the Trump administration appears to be targeting in order to ensure swift deportation of children who would otherwise qualify for legal immigration status under U.S. laws.
“We’re seeing kids [being] told that they have to file an application for asylum within 15 days with no lawyer, and that it’s on them to get a lawyer.”
“We’re seeing them line up kids in a group of 40, push them forward to pleadings, and order them removed the same day,” said Aber of the current state of chaos in immigration courts. “We’re seeing kids [being] told that they have to file an application for asylum within 15 days with no lawyer, and that it’s on them to get a lawyer.”
Not only is the federal government withholding funding for legal representation that Congress allocated, it’s also diverting it into dubious alternatives. News broke in mid-August that ORR unexpectedly granted a Utah-based anti-trafficking nonprofit called Our Rescue more than $244 million in funding for a contract it never applied for to provide legal services for unaccompanied minors. The organization’s founder, who formerly worked at the Department of Homeland Security, had resigned from his position at the organization in 2023 after multiple women accused him of — ironically — trafficking and abuse.
Another $150 million in funding was granted — also reportedly without advance notice — to a small law firm in Texas whose founder served in the first Trump administration. The Houston-based Burke Law Group — which did not ask for the funding, and has only two lawyers of the 26 it employs with expertise in immigration law — has reportedly declined the government’s offer.
Meanwhile, hundreds of legal aid organizations with the expertise and capacity to represent unaccompanied minors have been stripped of funding. “Courtrooms are inhospitable to adults,” explained JG. “To put a child who has no idea of what a courtroom is, with a judge dressed in a robe and a bunch of lawyers speaking in a language that’s not adjusted for them is just cruel.”
She attributed the cruelty to racism. “The Trump administration is doing this as a result of our kids being Brown, and it’s easier to dehumanize a Brown kid than a white kid.” (Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, JG’s two foster daughters are still awaiting the legal residency they were approved for two years ago, and had to give up good jobs after their work permits expired.)
“What the government is trying to do right now is to deport as many kids as possible, even if they, under the law, should benefit from protection,” Aber said. She recommends people sign onto a petition demanding the restoration of funding.
“I’ve seen children who entered this country alone go on to become poets and teachers and doctors and cherished community members,” she said. “Every one of those kids had someone fighting in their corner. And that is what is at stake right now.”
* The name of the foster parent is being withheld to protect her identity and that of her foster children.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Sonali Kolhatkar
Sonali Kolhatkar is a monthly contributor to Truthout. She is an award winning multimedia journalist and author. She is the host and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, a nationally syndicated weekly television and radio program airing on Pacifica stations and Free Speech TV. She was most recently Senior Editor at YES! Media covering race, economy, and democracy, and is currently Senior Correspondent for the Economy for All Project at the Independent Media Institute, and a monthly columnist for OtherWords, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. Her writings have been published in LA Times, Salon, The Nation, In These Times, Truthdig, and more. Her books include Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World is Possible (Seven Stories, 2025), Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights, 2023), and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories, 2006). Her first novel, Queen of Aarohi will publish in 2027 by Red Hen Press. Her website is www.SonaliKolhatkar.com.
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