“I was nervous because it was my first time going to a court,” said one boy. The federal government is seeking to deport him to a country he doesn’t even know
Kids deserve to be protected at all times, no matter their legal immigration status. Two recent analyses of federal data reveal that hundreds of thousands of children – including many kids who arrived in the U.S. without their parents or legal guardians – are currently facing immigration court alone. “Of 751,861 children with pending removal cases, 57%—or 425,093 children—lacked legal representation,” the Vera Institute of Justice and Drop Site News said.
One child who has been forced to appear in deportation court alone is ten-year-old Wilfredo. Despite the fact that he arrived with his mom and both have pending asylum cases, he’s been separated from her since last year, after she was detained during a routine traffic stop. With no other family here in the U.S., he’s being watched by his mom’s former boss while he faces deportation court alone, the report said.
““I was nervous because it was my first time going to a court,’ Wilfredo told Univision after his hearing. The DHS is seeking to deport him to Ecuador, a country where he knows no one and has never been.”
Unlike individuals in the criminal court system, immigrants facing deportation court have no right to a government-appointed attorney. This even extends to vulnerable children, who are going to court without an attorney at a higher rate than adults, Vera Institute of Justice and Drop Site News said. 57% of immigrant children currently in the court system lack legal representation, a rate “slightly higher than that of adults, 54% of whom are unrepresented in immigration court in pending cases.”
This should shock the conscience. The fact is that when individuals in immigration court have legal help, they fare better at every stage of the court process. Facing this process alone “is extremely difficult for adults, especially those who may have trauma histories or are unfamiliar with the English language, and all but impossible for children,” Vera previously said.
Last year, 7% of children with an attorney in completed cases won some form of legal relief to stay in the country. Less than 1% of children without an attorney did the same.No one should have to face deportation alone—not a child, not anyone.
— Vera Institute of Justice (@vera.org) 2026-07-13T14:29:44.548Z
This also isn’t new: children have been rushed through deportation court without legal help across administrations. What is new is that under the mass deportation obsessions of the current administration, these vulnerable children are being “detained and removed at about three times the rate they were during the last time President Donald Trump was in office,” ProPublica reports.
“In addition, a ProPublica analysis of court data found that immigration judges, who report to the Justice Department, have issued more than 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders each month for immigrant minors who either migrated alone or with relatives, a rate that is nearly four times higher than in Trump’s last term,” the report continues. “The vast majority of unaccompanied minors removed last year had no criminal history in the United States, ProPublica’s analysis of ICE data showed.”
In Seattle, federal immigration officials are looking to speed up these deportations by ordering hundreds of children to appear at mass immigration hearings, KUOW reported July 9.
“Seattle’s immigration court is packed with kids this week,” the report said. “Minors used to only have their hearings on Fridays, attorneys say — but starting Tuesday, the federal government embarked on what it says is a new way to process a backlog of cases. All these cases used to take months or years to process. Now they’re being moved up, sped up, and packed in on more days — in what are called ‘mega master’ hearings. These expanded hearings have already been taking place for adults over the past weeks and have now started for children.”
And while many are unaccompanied minors – again, children who arrived in the U.S. on their own – some have appeared in court with parents or guardians, the report said.
“The system is not a child-friendly system,” Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) managing attorney Hillary Larsen told KUOW. “It’s virtually impossible to go through the system having the child represent themself.” Yet children are intentionally being forced to navigate this system alone, as Vera Institute of Justice and Drop Site News noted.
“In February 2025, the Trump administration issued a ‘stop-work’ order to legal service providers such as KIND that are funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. That order disrupted support for nearly 26,000 children before it was rescinded three days later,” the report said. But just weeks later, the administration “abruptly terminated” federal grants that funded legal help for these kids. While a federal court said legal groups needed to get paid, KIND says it’s still owed $25 million.
“KIND, which relied on federal funding to cover 68% of its budget to represent more than 4,000 unaccompanied children, has reduced its staff to work within a strained budget. The organization is currently operating under these three month increments,” the report continued. In Texas, one report noted how a child walked into immigration court “with a stuffed lion”:
Under the administration’s war on children, federal immigration data has also revealed that officials have detained at least 500 infants and toddlers since last year, finding that children have been detained in what parents have described as “substandard conditions” that have left youngsters “sick, isolated and regressing in their physical and intellectual development.”
These attacks on children also extend far beyond those in detention. “Families in Tennessee with critically ill or severely disabled children who are undocumented are being asked to make a difficult choice: leave the state program that pays for lifesaving medication and treatment or stay and have their child reported to immigration authorities,” The Washington Post reported. Hundreds of families in the state have received a letter instructing them to either leave the program or face being reported. But as the Tennessee Outlook noted, there is no other safety net alternative in the state available to these children.
“This is life and death for very, very many of these kids,” Tennessee Justice Center Executive Director Michele Johnson told The Washington Post.
“I will not let him die. I will knock on doors, search for people, it doesn’t matter who I have to ask, who I have to talk to or wherever I have to travel. I will do anything,” one mom was forced to withdraw her 10-year-old son from the program told The Washington Post. “Please tell people that my husband pays taxes,” she continued to the Tennessee Outlook. “We are not trying to take anything from other people. We are just trying to help our son, as any parent would.”
