Agency providing legal help to immigrant kids forced to shut doors amid Trump administration cuts

Hundreds of immigrant children in Tennessee will soon lose access to their attorneys as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to withhold legal grant payments and end long-time contracts.

Mid-South Immigration Advocates serves about 400 children — ranging from infants to teens — who entered the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian and remain in Tennessee in federal custody or with family or sponsors. 

On Friday, it announced it is closing its doors in Nashville and Memphis, a decision with “dire consequences” for immigrant children, said Sally Joyner, legal director. Joyner said the organization’s closure will also strip legal representation for hundreds of adult clients it assists every year.

Children without attorneys must appear before immigration judges on their own, placing them at heightened risk for deportation, Joyner noted. Without legal representation, fewer than 1% of immigrant children are granted relief to remain in the United State in immigration courts, according to the Acacia Center for Justice, an umbrella organization for 100 nonprofit organizations nationwide that provide immigrant children with legal aid.

Joyner called it a “another level of disaster” with “dire consequences” for the children the nonprofit organization has been assisting with immigration legal assistance. 

The nonprofit is among scores of legal services organizations across the country that have struggled since the early months of the second Trump administration to receive longtime federal grants under existing contracts to provide legal representation to immigrant kids.

In March 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tried to permanently end the funding. A legal challenge to the funding decision put those funding cuts on hold, for now.

Then, in November, the administration implemented a new policy requiring that recipients of the grant funding begin turning over personal information about the children as a condition of receiving payments.

Joyner said legal organizations like hers cannot ethically share the privileged legal information and refused to provide confidential information about their young clients. As a result, Mid-South Immigration Advocates hasn’t been reimbursed $500,000 in federal funding for the legal assistance it has provided since November.

Joyner said her organization, with few exceptions, has been unable to accept new clients since early 2025. Fundraising has not bridged the funding gap and the agency has already tapped existing reserves, she said.

“We have diligently fulfilled our obligations by using reserve funding, and we have sought foundation funding to fill the gap,” the organization said in a message to clients and supporters. “But we are running out of resources, and therefore we are running out of time”

In total, the U.S. Health and Human Services agency has withheld more than $65 million in reimbursements to more than 100 agencies nationwide that it contracts with to provide immigrant children with legal representation, according to the Acacia Center for Justice.