One morning in October, more than two dozen people filed into a crowded immigration courtroom in Tucson. Some squeezed in on the floor. Others stood at the entrance and peered inside.
They were there for a proceeding called a master calendar hearing — where several people charged with the same thing appear at once. Before the court that morning were about 20 children. Some were almost legal adults, others weren't even in their teens yet.
Hearings like these, for children, are happening a few times a month now inside the Tucson Federal Building, a tall building where immigration courtrooms are housed.
Shiny black windows look out onto a big fountain and you can hear the sound of the street car zooming past. Big double doors at the entrance open up to a metal detector inside.
In court that morning, Judge Irene Feldman looked out from her raised bench at the packed courtroom full of children, case managers, attorneys and court observers.
“This is the beginning of our removal proceedings,” she told the kids.
‘A shock to the system’
For years, a federally funded program has provided free legal counsel to unaccompanied immigrant children who are in government custody and seeking asylum in the U.S.
Funding was cut earlier this year by the Trump administration. Even though the money’s since been restored, attorneys say the lapse sent organizations into a tailspin that’s still playing out today.
In court that day in October, most of the children were facing the judge without an attorney. That’s become the norm.
“A year ago, that wouldn’t have happened, because we would be most likely representing those children,” said Ana Islas, a staff attorney with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Project who leads the Tucson children’s team.
Normally, Islas and other attorneys on her team represent unaccompanied children who are in government custody as part of the federally funded legal aid program.
They received a stop-work order in February, when the Trump administration first moved to enact the cuts. By March, most of the annual $200 million federal contract shared by legal organizations nationwide had been slashed.
A U.S. anti-trafficking law called the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 requires the government to ensure “to the greatest extent practicable" that all unaccompanied children “have counsel to represent them in legal proceedings."
Another Office of Refugee Resettlement directive, called the 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.
The Florence Project and other organizations filed suit to restore the funding on those bases, arguing Congress already appropriated those funds through September 2027.
A federal judge agreed and ruled to restore the funding in full at the end of April. But, Sam Hsieh, an attorney who’s part of the legal team to restore the money, says the lapse caused lasting damage.
“A lot of these orgs have built their programming, their staff, a lot of processes around serving these unaccompanied children, in reliance of this federal funding. And so when this all went away, it was a shock to the system,” said Hsieh, who serves as the deputy director of the Immigration Impact Lab at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights.
Longer custody, fewer attorneys
Greer Millard, Florence Project communications manager, says 35 of the 200-person staff were laid off in July amid federal funding cuts and uncertainty.
They’re looking for another attorney to join the kids team now, but the organization says it hasn’t been able to hire everyone back because the money is still under threat — the government is still appealing the ruling and funding is now only dispensed in three-month increments.
Islas says court prep for kids not on their caseload is still limited to Know Your Rights presentations to groups in government custody.
“So, I feel like, on a level they are prepared because they know their rights, but at the same time, no child is prepared to represent themselves in front of the court,” she said.
More than 500 children are represented by the Florence Project around Arizona today. Like with adult asylum, children's cases for protection can take years, and the organization says it hasn’t withdrawn from any cases it was already part of.
But the group says it mostly hasn’t been able to take on new individual cases — especially as it works to respond to other deportation efforts, like one in August, when the Trump administration attempted to send hundreds of Guatemalan children in Arizona and elsewhere on nighttime flights back to Guatemala.
Islas says that’s coming as children are stuck in government custody longer, staying in shelters run by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
She says in the past, kids were released quickly to foster care or family members to pursue their cases. But biometric data like fingerprints and even DNA are now part of the reunification process — something undocumented families may be too afraid to do. Another new rule requires sponsors to come to ICE offices in person — where some have been arrested.
“You know, they know their parents are close by but they may not be able to go see them,” said attorney Laura Enriquez, who works with unaccompanied children and oversees a government-run shelter in Tucson as part of the Florence Project’s Tucson children’s team.
Enriquez says there’s also just more kids in court this year. She says asylum or special visa applications for kids used to be prepared with attorneys and mostly reviewed at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Now, children are beginning their cases in front of a judge like Feldman, who oversees most of the children’s dockets in Tucson.
One by one, they’re called to the front, where a government attorney hands them papers about asylum and other protection they could apply for. All of it is in English — a language Enriquez says most can’t read.
On one October hearing, a smiling 6-year-old from Mexico with short black hair and a button-down shirt swung his legs back and forth while listening to a Spanish-language interpretation of Feldman’s instructions.
“Those documents are for you, but they aren’t homework,” she told him.
After receiving their documents, the children in the October hearings were asked if their parents are U.S. citizens and whether they needed more time to find an attorney, and a new hearing was set for a future date.
Enriquez and other attorneys still attend the hearings and take notes, even if they’re not representing children there.
“It’s emotionally tolling, to see the kids,” Enriquez said. “Frankly, I don’t believe that they understand the gravity of the situation, because, I mean, they’re just learning what a judge is.”
U.S. Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) did not respond to questions about the number of children in custody in Arizona, or what legal aid was made available.
Government data shows there were an average of 2,094 children in ORR custody nationwide as of September, and they were staying there for an average of more than six months before being released.
Uphill battle
Even children who do get out of shelters face an uphill battle in court, especially without attorneys.
At another October hearing, a Tucson woman named Lily quieted her two young children as they waited for her 11-year-old half-sister to be called up by the judge. KJZZ is not using her full name because she’s worried speaking could impact the case.
“I’m here to get my sister — she is a minor — either a possibility of U.S. citizenship or a green card to keep her here, because she is not safe in Mexico,” Lily said after the hearing.
Lily is a U.S. citizen. She says her half-sister and their mother are Mexican citizens who came to Arizona last year fleeing an abusive situation. Their mother was arrested and eventually deported.
“I know my mom was deported, but she was able to stay here and we are so thankful and grateful for that because she’s all I have, and I’m all she has honestly,” she said. “I just, I want to give her a good life.”
Lily says the child’s father was a U.S. citizen, too, but he died, and Lily’s not sure how to get his records. She’s trying to become her sister’s guardian now, something she has to go to state court to do.
They told Feldman that day that they still hadn’t found a lawyer for her asylum case — every office Lily called was on a wait.
“It’s just been a little mix-up and a circle. And I just feel like I don’t get any help anywhere I go. And I’ve been trying to do it all by myself,” she said.
