A federal program providing legal assistance to unaccompanied migrant children was forced to a halt this week after the federal funding it relies on was shut off.
Unaccompanied children had received legal services after coming to shelters run by the Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. Those services are paid for by a $200 million yearly contract shared among legal aid groups working in various states.
Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu is the deputy director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. The group provides direct representation to more than 800 children in Arizona, along with thousands of others who need representation in court proceedings. She says they were ordered to stop all work on Tuesday, despite congressionally approved laws that require those services.
“We are demanding access to continue to provide these critical services under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, and the Florence foundational rule,” she said.
Avila-Cimpeanu says her group is still operating legal services using their own funds for now, but they’re exploring options for legal challenges to restart the federal funding.
Jennifer Podkul is the chief of global policy and advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND. The group has more than 4,500 cases through the program and was also ordered to stop work Tuesday.
"That means that we have to stop working on cases in which we may have already entered into an attorney-client relationship with the child, we have to stop providing services to the hundreds of private attorneys who are taking these cases for free and representing children," Podkul said.
Podkul says the stop work order puts 26,000 children at risk of trafficking, deportation and other risks.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The story has been updated to correct the spelling of Jennifer Podkul's name.
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