The Trump administration has slashed funding for a legal services program for unaccompanied migrant children.
This is the latest in a long back and forth in recent weeks over the legal services program. It’s a roughly $200 million federal contract split by legal aid groups in Arizona and other states that allows attorneys to speak to and represent children after they’ve been released into shelter facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
As reported by ABC news, a partial cut of that grant funding was announced in a memo from the Department of Interior on Friday. Under the new stipulations, funding for legal representation for children has been cut. A smaller portion of the funding that allows attorneys to set up Know Your Rights workshops for detained children is still intact.
Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu is the deputy director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project — the legal group doing that work in Arizona. She says those presentations are part of the initial service provided to children.
“We meet with them within 10 days where possible to give them that legal orientation, which provides them with Know Your Rights … on the process that you're going through — what's going to happen? What is a judge, what is a government attorney? What are your rights?” she said. “And also, what are your protections … the shelter should give you education, should give you food, should not be making you feel uncomfortable.”
But without the rest of the funding, Avila-Cimpeanu says attorneys won’t be able to follow children’s cases and monitor potential issues or abuse.
“What is going to be missing from this new system is that ability to meet with children on an ongoing basis to make sure that — even though they got that initial education — six months later, are they still being treated with respect?” she said. “There are … a lot of reasons why it's critical for legal service providers like us to be the eyes and ears on the ground. ... For the government to strip the funding that allows for that, while at the same time claiming to care for children, it’s a very concerning, shocking situation, and people should be outraged.”
Avila-Cimpeanu says the Florence Project is currently representing more than 800 children in Arizona and cases can go on for years. The program helps some 26,000 children nationwide. Children could now be sent into complex court proceedings alone.
“It's impossible to imagine how a child as young as 6 months old or 3 years old would be able to retain an attorney on their own,” she said.
In February, the Florence Project and other groups part of the program received stop work orders when the program was briefly put on hold. Avila-Cimpeanu says this latest memo is different because it appears to completely sever some of the funding altogether.
The Department of Interior did not answer questions about the memo.
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