Children “who have fled violence, trafficking, and abuse” woke up Saturday without the legal support they were promised, said one legal service provider
Thousands of immigrant children have been stripped of legal assistance and could be retraumatized by being forced to go through the complicated deportation court system alone, after the Trump administration bucked years of precedent – and decency – to deliberately allow a federal contract ensuring lifesaving representation for these vulnerable kids to expire.
The contract, which funded nearly 100 legal groups to provide legal help for about 20,000 kids, lapsed last Friday and could lead to children who have already experienced prior traumatization being subjected to further harm, advocates and experts say.
“Children who have fled violence, trafficking, and abuse will wake up tomorrow without the legal support they were promised,” Acacia Center for Justice Executive Director Shaina Aber said. “They won’t know the legal rights they may be entitled to without a lawyer by their side. What they will know is that there is an administration in power that is doing everything it can to expedite their deportation. And we will do everything we can to protect them.”
‘A BLATANT ATTACK ON CHILDREN’S WELLBEING’
Erin Maxwell, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with nearly 20 years of experience working with immigrant children and a co-director of the Detained Immigrant Children’s Project at Legal Services for Children, said she’s never seen “such a blatant attack on children’s wellbeing.”
“Without their attorneys, children and youth left with complex, persistent trauma, will not only lose access to due process, but will not have the teams of supportive adults looking out for their legal and psychosocial needs,” Maxwell said. “I believe that without the support, children will be at greater risk of trafficking and exploitation and potential mental health conditions.”
This is deliberate cruelty, full stop. Despite the fact that presidents across party lines have supported some funding to provide legal help for children who arrive in the U.S. alone – unlike individuals in the criminal court system, immigrants facing deportation court have no right to a government-appointed attorney – the administration has refused to pay more than $65 million in congressionally-appropriated reimbursements for services already provided to kids.
This unjust withholding of funds initially forced legal assistance groups to stop taking any new clients. Groups like Estrella del Paso are now being forced to lay off employees and shut down their legal services entirely. The group, which is owed nearly $1 million in reimbursements, says nearly 250 of its young clients stand to be impacted. This sudden loss of funding “threatens to dismantle decades of specialized experience serving traumatized children,” said Estrella del Paso Executive Director Melissa M. Lopez.
DEFENSELESS CHILDREN FACE TRAINED GOVERNMENT ATTORNEYS ALONE
The result will be children, “some too young to speak for themselves,” forced to go into immigration court alone to face “trained government attorneys by themselves, in a language they may not speak, in a system they cannot navigate without help,” Acacia said.
“Even children with strong cases will not know what forms of relief they qualify for, how to apply, or how to gather the evidence needed to make their case. For unaccompanied children who arrive without parents and often without any support system, the consequences will be immediate and severe,” Acacia continued.
“We know what happens to children who go to court without an attorney,” Lopez told Border Report. “In one word, it is deportation.” The fact is that when individuals in immigration court have legal help, they fare better at every stage of the court process.
Acacia said a deaf, non-verbal, and autistic boy who was abducted while fleeing to the U.S. is among the thousands of kids who now have a chance at a better life thanks to the kinds of legal services that the administration is now seeking to deny to others.
“During his journey to the U.S., the child was kidnapped and held for ransom for nearly a year before his mother was able to secure his escape,” the organization said. “After reaching safety and living in the U.S. for years, his own family didn’t know he qualified for immigration relief. It took legal advocates to identify his case, fight for it, and win. Today, he is attending school and building a future that once seemed out of reach.”
“Without an attorney, he may never have applied for the protections available to him and could have faced deportation to the same conditions he left,” Acacia continued.
The administration has tried to quell criticism by claiming that it offered advocates a stopgap agreement, but Aber said this was stipulated on an unprecedented ask that required legal providers to “betray our legal ethics and the confidences of children who we are representing” and hand over confidential client information, as NOTUS reported. “Obviously, that’s not tenable,” Aber said.
SOME STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS PROVIDING CRITICAL ASSISTANCE
“Despite the closure of the program, Lopez said Estrella del Paso intends to continue representing its current clients and appealed to the community for support,” Border Report continued. “We need your help to make sure we keep our doors open and continue to see through our responsibility to these children,” Lopez said.
States and localities could also be critical in protecting children while organizations continue appealing what’s owed to them. In California, state leaders successfully pushed for $15 million in funding for legal representation and case management for immigrant children. In New York City, the local budget allocated nearly $17 million to help fund attorneys for kids and families, Gothamist reported.
“However, immigration legal providers say that extra funding doesn’t cover the gap in funding from the lapsed federal contract,” the report continued. Nor should the administration be off the hook for what it owes. Health and Human Services and the administration “remain obligated to honor their commitment to provide legal services for unaccompanied children,” Acacia reminds. Aber said that Friday was a “somber day, but we don’t want to give up hope for tomorrow because we will keep fighting for these children.”
