The Florence Project says it will represent unaccompanied minors even without payment

There are 24,000 kids in the U.S. who don’t have a parent or legal guardian and who don’t have any legal status in the country. They’re the “unaccompanied minors” we have heard so much about and, now, they could have no legal representation.

About 1,800 of them are currently in federal custody.

It comes after the Trump administration’s contract with groups like the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project here in Arizona lapsed because lawyers have refused to turn over confidential information about the children they represented to the feds.

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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.

Now, the Florence Project says they’ll continue to represent the migrant children as long as they can. And, the groups that could be getting those contracts instead are raising eyebrows.

NPR reports the Trump administration has awarded a $158 million no-bid contract to a group called Our Rescue, a controversial anti-trafficking organization with QAnon ties and questionable experience in the area.

Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu is deputy director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. She spoke more about it, including that the process these kids have normally gone through is actually protected by law.

Full conversation

ROXANA AVILA-CIMPEANU: Under that law, they must be transferred to an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter within 72 hours. And what should happen is that once children arrive into that government facility, the Office of Refugee Resettlement should be working to reunify them with sponsors who are able to take care of them in a very culturally appropriate manner and ensure that they continue their immigration cases and allow for the child to find an attorney in a setting that is much more conducive to them talking about the worst days of their lives.

What we're seeing since pretty much Day 1 of this administration is a series of concerted attacks that make it harder for children to find safety. Kids are being forced to stay in detention much longer. We have some clients who have been in detention for over a year, and they are being called to court more frequently.

And so while children are staying in detention longer and going to court more frequently, getting closer and closer to removal, they're also losing trusted, qualified legal representation across the country.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And that's to do with what also happened at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, right, which is that they've stopped paying for legal services like yours because many lawyers, I'm sure including you, declined to provide that agency with confidential information they had requested about the children, like what?

ROXANA AVILA-CIMPEANU: Exactly. Yes, this is a contract that has been, you know, decades in the works and that we have been working under for decades. It was allowed to lapse on July 31. For the Florence Project, we could not comply morally or within the bounds of legal ethics with some of the terms in that contract.

Some of those terms included things like sharing specific case information about children, including what types of relief we're filing for, the status of hearings and what happened at those hearings, what kind of legal advice we gave them. So essentially, things that any attorney with basic knowledge of legal ethics should understand are confidential and cannot be shared without permission of the children.

And we certainly are not in a position to break that confidence, either legally or ethically or morally. But we certainly aren't looking to share that information with an administration who has shown that their Number 1 priority is to remove these children as quickly as possible.

LAUREN GILGER: What might happen to these 24,000 children and their cases at this point, Roxana?

ROXANA AVILA-CIMPEANU: Yes, we are extremely worried. As you mentioned, there is a network of seasoned, child-centered, experienced, both technically and, you know, psychosocially, being able to work with children who have suffered trauma.

And I think it's important, you know, we're talking about a contract, but what we're really talking about is children. And these are children who, for some reason or another, have arrived alone in a foreign country and who our government has an obligation to protect. Part of that protection is ensuring that children have independent legal counsel, not only to explain their rights to them, but also to represent them and help them apply for relief that they likely qualify for.

And so what we're very concerned about is that with the lapsing of the contract and with no clear picture about what's happening next, except for some cobbled-together agreements that don't seem to be nearly adequate enough to represent these children, what we're going to see is children losing the ability to find a court, you know, mandated attorney to help them with their case.

We're going to see children getting pushed through this mass deportation rocket docket situation that we've been seeing for several months now, and we're going to be seeing children who are eligible for relief, such as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status or asylum, being deported to countries where they could they could face further harm or where they could even be killed.

LAUREN GILGER: Many, I know, organizations like yours who represented these children around the country are, and have not been paid for those services, are reducing staff, taking fewer cases, showing up to court anyway often because they feel an ethical obligation to. What is the status there at Florence Project?

ROXANA AVILA-CIMPEANU: We plan to do whatever we can for as long as we can do it. We've been doing this work for over two decades. And you're right, the last seven months of uncertainty and the lapsing of this program has already had negative impacts on children.

So for example, children in detention across the country today are not receiving the services that they normally would have because organizations across the country are being forced to close their unaccompanied children program, to reduce staffing, or to furlough.

And this also extends to when children are actually able to be reunified with family in other states, what we would typically do is refer them to other organizations in the network. And now there are fewer and fewer options for children who are able to get out of detention.

And so at the Florence Project, and I know across the network, we feel we have an obligation to continue to stand by these children and do whatever we can for them for as long as we can and as long as we have the resources to do so.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so you talked about your concerns about what could happen to these children. I mean, tell us a story of one of them that you know that that kind of encompasses this for us. When we talk about unaccompanied minors, why are they coming here?

ROXANA AVILA-CIMPEANU: Yeah, I think that is really the most important thing about this situation that I really want people to hear, which is that we're talking about children who need our help. Unaccompanied children are by definition children who are here without a parent or guardian willing or able to take care of them.

Now, I will say that sometimes the reason they're unaccompanied minors is because our government is separating families, so we're still seeing that happen. We have several children we're assisting right now who have been separated from their parents here in the United States.

But in the end, none of them have a parent or guardian willing or able to care for them at this time. They're coming here for many reasons. So it could be because they're fleeing harm, they're fleeing abuse, they're fleeing war conditions, or fleeing environmental conditions.

I will tell you the story of one of the clients that we represented who her father was murdered, and she was living with her mother, and when the man who murdered her father got out of jail, he started looking for her. And so she escaped and went to live with her aunt. But while she was living with her aunt, she was abused.

And so having tried to find safety in multiple places, she made the difficult decision of coming to the United States and found herself alone here, where we were able to assist her and help her file for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, and she is now a green card holder. And this client, were she to come today, would have a much harder time finding a legal service organization to help her go through that process.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, well we'll have to leave it there for now. Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu joining us, deputy director at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. Roxana, thank you for coming on The Show. Thanks for explaining this to us.

ROXANA AVILA-CIMPEANU: Thanks, Lauren.