More than 24,000 immigrant children could lose legal representation as a federal contract expires

More than 24,000 immigrant children could lose legal representation as a federal contract expires - Click here to listen to this article - Share via See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred - A government contract that pays nonprofits to provide legal assistance to children in immigration proceedings will expire July 31. - The termination of the contract will affect more than 24,000 unaccompanied immigrant children and some 90 nonprofit legal providers across the U.S. - Advocates say attorneys play a critical role in protecting children by uncovering abuse, documenting unlawful conditions, exposing government failures, and ensuring children’s rights are upheld. More than 24,000 immigrant children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or guardian and are facing deportation could lose access to legal representation this week when a federal contract funding nonprofit legal services expires, leaving some organizations to scale back or end assistance altogether. The cuts are compounded by the Trump administration’s refusal to reimburse the nonprofits roughly $65 million for legal services they have already provided to unaccompanied migrant children — payments the organizations argue they are entitled to under federal law. The expiration of the contract on Friday, legal providers said, will affect about 90 organizations nationwide, including several in California. Lindsay Toczylowski, chief executive director and co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which serves 13 facilities in Greater Los Angeles, said during a Wednesday news conference that more than 1,500 unaccompanied children that her organization represents will be affected. Toczylowski said other organizations in the L.A. area that will be affected include the Public Counsel, Central American Resource Center and the Immigration Center for Women and Children. Sen. Ron Wyden said he had ‘credible information’ the Trump administration had a list of more than 500 migrant children for fast-track removal and was racing to act in days. “I’m thinking of clients I personally have represented over the years — trafficking victims, asylum seekers, children separated from their parents — and wondering what chance kids like them will have if no one is there to fight for them,” she said. “Lawyers are often the only independent witnesses in the immigration system. ... [They] have been the ones to uncover abuse, document unlawful conditions, expose government failures, and ensure children’s rights are not being violated.” Toczylowski said it was attorneys who filed legal petitions for two young girls — ages 6 and 15 — to reunite them with their families after they had languished in federal custody for some seven months. Elsewhere in the country, some organizations say they’re being forced to end legal services for unaccompanied children. That’s the case for Melissa Lopez of Estrella El Paso, a nonprofit that provides such services in the El Paso, Texas, region and New Mexico. Lopez said her organization cannot afford its unaccompanied children’s legal program in west Texas. “We are owed a significant amount of money — nearly a million dollars — for our program,” Lopez said. “We are not able to sustain this program without this contract.” She said, come Friday afternoon, she would have to terminate the staff working on the program that they’d spent 20 years developing. Lopez said the loss would be significant for the region, which she described as a “legal desert.” “We are in an area where there aren’t enough attorneys for the community regardless of the type of case that they might have,” she said. El Paso, she said, is also home to one of the largest detention centers in the U.S. Meena Shah, managing director of legal services at the Door, a nonprofit in New York, says the federal government owes her organization about $2 million for legal services it has provided to unaccompanied children. She worries about losing access to her clients and other children, who will now be forced to face a complex immigration system alone. A federal judge in California ordered the government to stop using “blatantly coercive” language to persuade immigrant children to self-deport. “It’s preposterous to think that a child would be able to self-represent,” she said, “and I think any rational adult would agree with that.” Problems began in March 2025, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services terminated its federal contract with the Washington-based Acacia Center for Justice. The nonprofit subcontracts with around 100 legal service providers nationwide who represent tens of thousands of unaccompanied children. The contract was up for renewal that same month. That prompted the center and a coalition of nonprofit legal providers to file a federal class-action lawsuit against the agency and the Trump administration, alleging they were in violation of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a federal law enacted by Congress in 2008. The law ensures unaccompanied children have legal counsel to represent them in legal proceedings and to protect them from mistreatment, exploitation and trafficking. Since the law’s enactment, Congress has provided funding for the national program. In 2024, it set aside about $5 billion to fund the program through September 2027. In June 2025, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the Acacia Center for Justice’s contract and continue to fund the program. Since then, the contract has been extended, but it is set to expire Friday. Problems worsened in November when the Trump administration stopped paying its invoices as it demanded that the Acacia Center and its subcontractors provide information about clients that legal service providers say violates attorney-client privilege. The coalition nonprofits say a federal court hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 6 to address the issues. Legal service providers said at the heart of the matter is upholding due process, protecting children from exploitation and ensuring the federal government follows its own laws. Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the Trump administration’s refusal to reimburse nonprofits is an effort to prevent them from doing that. “They are clearly trying to destroy the program by grinding down the financial health of nonprofits,” he said. “We’ve seen layoffs and furloughs, and we will see a lot more of that if these invoices aren’t paid.” Last month, Kids in Need of Defense said in a written statement that it was canceling its subcontract with the Acacia Center for Justice after it had accrued more than $20 million in unpaid legal feels for assisting immigrant children. But also in June, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), a former immigration law professor, re-introduced the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, a bill that would provide unaccompanied children with legal representation during proceedings in immigration courts. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking and nonsensical to see children as young as 4 years old, unable to speak English, showing up to immigration court to face these complex proceedings alone,” she said in a statement at the time. A number of current and former federal, state and local prosecutors sent a signed letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raising law enforcement and humanitarian concerns about the program ending without a set plan. Toczylowski said termination of a program that serves one of the most vulnerable immigrant populations should be viewed as an attack on children and Americans should be alarmed. “When you take lawyers away from children, you do not just take away legal representation, you remove one of the few meaningful checks on government misconduct,” she said. “We have always said that our presence next to a child in a courtroom is one of the only things that gives them a fighting chance at justice in our broken immigration system.”