Trump and Stephen Miller have introduced a new low in their ugly mission to deport vulnerable immigrant kids
It’s hard to imagine how much more of a dire situation the Trump administration can intentionally create for immigrant children, after allowing the federal contract that funded their legal representation to expire. Somehow, this administration always finds an uglier, more despicable way to impose fear on children.
DISGRACED NGO ‘OUR RESCUE’ SET TO GET MILLIONS DESPITE SHADY PAST AND BEING ‘WHOLLY UNQUALIFIED’ TO PROVIDE LEGAL HELP
The Prospect’s Whitney Curry Wimbish reports that an anti-trafficking organization formerly led by an individual who has himself been accused of trafficking, sexual assault and grooming has won a no-bid, $244 million federal contract to represent these kids in court. Like Burke Law (more on this group later), Our Rescue doesn’t specialize in immigration law or even appear to provide legal services. Instead, the administration stands to flood this organization with millions in taxpayer dollars despite it being tied to a slew of accusations that make it wholly unqualified to hold a federal agreement, much less interact with this extremely vulnerable population.
“Our Rescue conducts international sting operations to catch sex traffickers, similar to Dateline’s ‘To Catch a Predator,’” The Prospect begins. But in 2023, several former employees accused founder and former CEO Tim Ballard of sexual assault and trafficking, including coercing women “into acting as his romantic partner so that traffickers wouldn’t suspect him,” the report said. “They said that he would assault them while demanding they ‘remain in character’ and play their part as one half of a ‘kinky couple.’”
Legal representatives for the women said they tried to report the assaults to Our Rescue “but were ignored,” NBC News reported.
Professor Stephanie Richard, Director of the Sunita Jain Anti-Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, told The New Yorker that when she heard that this same organization was now poised to purportedly protect children in the complex immigration court system, she cried. Michael Lukens, executive director of Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, told The Salt Lake Tribune the group “is wholly unqualified.”
“They do not do this work; they do not have any immigrant defense attorneys; they don’t have a national network,” Lukens said.
STEPHEN MILLER WANTS TO DEPORT THESE KIDS AS PART OF HIS ANTI-IMMIGRANT OBSESSION
Both The New Yorker and The Prospect noted that the administration’s goal here is to set the stage to quickly deport these children as part of its mass deportation purge. Just look at the administration’s recent actions, including its refusal to pay legal groups millions in reimbursements for legal services already provided (a judge has since ordered it to hand over the funds), and of course allowing the contract with Acacia Center for Justice to expire, “effectively dismantling the nationwide network of nearly 100 legal service providers that have provided counsel to more than 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children,” as the organization noted.
“We know what happens to children who go to court without an attorney,” as Estrella del Paso Executive Director Melissa M. Lopez previously 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.
‘CHILDREN TOO YOUNG TO UNDERSTAND’
In just one example of a child being forced to attend court alone, a child named Diego asked the presiding immigration judge to help him with his English-language asylum form. “I don’t know how to do it,” he said, according to Documented. “I don’t know if you can help me fill it out.” The boy “had repeatedly stressed that he was afraid to return to Guatemala in his native K’iche’, translated through two interpreters relaying his words from K’iche’ to Spanish, then Spanish to English,” the report continued.
“Unfortunately I can’t help you,” the immigration judge replied.
“In multiple immigration courtrooms this summer,” Curry Wimbish noted in her report, “the Prospect has witnessed children too young to understand the gravity of the proceedings, such as a toddler with pigtails, who had no guardian with her, and who played in her chair as her pro bono lawyer spoke to the judge, then held his hand when they walked out.”
TRUMP-ALIGNED LEGAL GROUP BACKS OUT FOLLOWING REPORTING
Our Rescue’s contract follows reporting that the administration had awarded a similarly controversial, $150 million contract to a small, Trump-linked Texas law firm that also lacks the necessary experience to represent kids. But last week, Burke Law Group announced that it was withdrawing from consideration, ABC News reported.
While there’s no official explanation as to why it suddenly declined the lucrative agreement, it’s worth remembering that Acacia revealed that the administration had demanded it violate children’s privacy and hand over confidential information in order to get reimbursed for its services. Maybe there is too much ugliness even for a Trump-linked law firm to undertake.
Speculation aside, what is assured is that without experienced, culturally-sensitive legal help, children will have to show up to immigrant court alone and be deported, many to the violent circumstances they fled in the first place.
“If children are not able to retain the counsel that they have because of the financial situation that the various nonprofits are facing, then we will see kids removed very, very quickly,” Acacia Executive Director Shaina Aber told The New Yorker.
THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING WAR ON CHILDREN
Meanwhile, the administration is also attacking many of these same kids by violating a decades-old court order dictating how long a child can be held in a government-contracted shelter. That agreement says 20 days, but the judge overseeing that case “noted cases of minors confined for 50 days, 91 days or even 323 days,” The Marshall Project said. Judge Dolly Gee has now had to appoint an independent watchdog following reports of numerous violations harming children, including medical neglect.
This is plainly child abuse and a war on children happening on a large scale – funded by our tax dollars.
“From the outset of this administration, a priority has been on stripping children of their legal rights,” Aber continued to The New Yorker. “And this episode is a culmination of what the administration has been trying to do for a long time, which is to pump up their deportation numbers on the backs of children.”
