A group of legal aid groups are suing the Trump administration over the halting of millions in federal funding for the legal support of unaccompanied migrant children.
The program includes a handful of legal services providers in Arizona and elsewhere who represent unaccompanied migrant children in immigration court. Last Friday, the federal government released a memo halting most of that funding.
Karen Tumlin is founder and director of the Justice Action Center — one of the groups part of the suit. She says it's a congressionally mandated program serving thousands of children nationwide.
“These are children who are alone in this country, right? And so, like, please don’t think of this as dollars and cents, I want you to picture a little child in a courtroom where their feet don’t even touch the ground. That is what this case is about,” she said on a press call Friday.
“Congress said, these kids need counsel, they used mandatory language, and a group presentation is not the same as standing up in front of a government attorney trying to deport the child, an immigration judge, and articulating why they have the right to remain in the country.”
Under the new plan, lawyers are not funded to accompany children to individual court proceedings. A small portion of the program — providing group Know Your Rights presentations for minors in government custody — remains funded.
The suit is filed against U.S. Health and Human Services, the Department of Interior and the Office of Refugee Resettlement — the three agencies that handle shelter facilities and provider contracts for unaccompanied children.
It cites the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, or the TVPRA, which it says requires the government to “ensure, to the greatest extent practicable,” that all unaccompanied children receive legal counsel to represent them in legal proceedings. It also says the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s 2024 Foundational Rule requires the government to “fund legal service providers and to provide direct immigration legal representation” to unaccompanied children if there are available appropriations, and says funding is supposed to be available through Sept. 2027.
“Congress has appropriated funds to ensure as many unaccompanied children as possible are represented by lawyers,” the suit reads. “For fiscal year 2024, for example, Congress appropriated more than $5 billion for Defendants to deliver services to unaccompanied children under various statutory obligations, which includes funding to provide legal representation for unaccompanied children under the TVPRA “to the greatest extent practicable.”
A spokesperson with Health and Human Services said the agency “continues to meet the legal requirements” of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, but did not answer questions about specific requirements cited in the suit.
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