A case over legal aid funding for immigrant children was in court again Thursday.
Attorneys representing the children say the government is withholding $65 million and demanding they release sensitive information about their clients.
A federal program funds legal services for children alone in the U.S.. Legal groups in the program sued after the Trump administration tried to end it last year, and a judge ruled in their favor. Now the groups are asking the same court to find the government in contempt for failing to pay them at all this year.
In court this week, attorneys for the legal groups argued the government wants granular data about clients — information they say is both protected by attorney-client privilege, and impossible to calculate eight months later.
Government attorneys argued their data requests are necessary to verify the work the legal groups are doing. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said she’d issue her ruling shortly.
In a ruling Thursday evening, District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin ordered the government to pay out the $65 million withheld from legal aid groups since November of last year. The funds are required to be released by noon on Friday. Under the order, Health and Human Services, the agency responsible for immigrant children in government custody, is also required to report back to court about how legal services for the children will continue.
The ruling comes a day after news broke of the government’s plan to offer legal aid to detained immigrant children through a $150 million contract Burke Law Group — a small Texas-based firm with a co-founder who is a former Trump appointee.
The government’s contract with the legal groups part of the suit in court this week expired July 31 and has not been renewed.
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New federal court filings reveal that efforts to build an ICE detention center in Surprise are progressing slowly, and the Department of Homeland Security has indicated there is no rush to open the facility. -
Court records obtained by the research group TRAC show the government filed 50 such cases in the month of July — including two in Arizona. -
Congress created the federal legal aid program almost two decades ago and has directed funds to it every year. But on July 31, the roughly $200 million annual contract to do that work came to an end. -
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of similar legal challenges the Trump administration has filed following a 2025 executive order directing the Justice Department to take action against state laws that allegedly favor undocumented people. -
An ongoing dispute between Border Patrol and the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona continues to escalate.
