‘Children are going to die’: advocates decry migrant-child legal contract

The federal government’s decision to award a small Texas law firm run by a Trump ally a $150 million contract to represent over a thousand migrant children is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the rights and fasttrack the removal of minors who entered the country alone, including hundreds in Arizona who are seeking asylum, according to immigrant legal aid organizations

Michael Lukens, the executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, one of a nationwide network of legal aid groups that has consistently worked with immigrant children over nearly two decades, questioned the ability of such a small law firm to take on so many cases. 

Burke Law Group, which has a staff of just 26 and specializes in corporate law, will now be tasked with representing 1,800 unaccompanied children who live in federally operated shelters across the country. After news of the federal contract broke, the law firm amended its website to boast about its work in immigration law. 

It is unclear who will provide legal representation to the 22,000 other unaccompanied children who live with sponsors. 

During a virtual news conference on Wednesday, Luken criticized the choice to hire the Burke Law Group as a “grift” and warned that immigrant children would suffer as a result. The law firm was founded by Marcella Burke, a former Trump appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. 

“Children are going to get no meaningful due process,” Luken warned. “No meaningful day in court.”

Under a 2008 anti-human trafficking law, the federal government is obligated to ensure children who arrive in the country by themselves have access to legal counsel, but the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to erode that mandate. 

Twice last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees immigrant children, issued stop work orders to nonprofit organizations contracted to provide legal counsel for immigrant minors. The orders were ultimately reversed shortly after lawsuits were filed. 

And since November, the Trump administration has withheld payments for the legal defense of the children, leaving law firms to expend their own resources or lay off staff to make up the difference and continue providing help. 

On July 31, a contract between the federal government and the Acacia Center for Justice expired. The organization partnered with more than a hundred legal nonprofits across the country to provide legal aid for immigrant children. The federal government offered Acacia Center a new contract, but the organization rejected it, saying it would not comply with requirements that confidential information about immigrant children be shared in exchange for the funding. Among the things Acacia Center said the Trump administration demanded was detailing the legal strategies attorneys anticipated pursuing on behalf of their juvenile clients.   

In Arizona, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is the only organization that provides free legal services for immigrant children who arrive in the country without a parent or guardian. Deputy Director Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu said she’s concerned about the quality of care children will receive if the existing legal framework is erased. 

She noted that legal nonprofits that work with immigrant children do much more than attending hearings; attorneys provide individual legal consultations, set up know your rights presentations and perform wellness check ins. Just last week, Avila-Cimpeanu said, attorneys met with a young girl who is being sexually abused in a detention facility and are working to remove her from that environment. 

“We, as a legal service provider, are able to go there and be the eyes and ears on the ground, talk to her, make sure that nothing else happens and get her out of that situation,” she said. “If this national network of attorneys who have experience and know what the rights of children are is dismantled — who is going to be doing that work? Who is going to ensure that children are being treated with dignity and respect, are safe and cared for and have somebody in their corner?” 

Between January and June 6, according to the most recent data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 1,600 children crossed Arizona’s southern border without a parent or legal guardian. 

Much of the work that the Florence Project does is in person, after a child first arrives at a detention center. Under federal law, attorneys must provide an individual legal consultation and a know-your-rights presentation to a child within ten days of their arrival at an immigration facility. And know-your-rights presentations must occur again every six months. 

It’s unclear how a Texas-based law firm will fulfill those directives without immigrant children having to be moved to the Lone Star State or awarding subcontracts to local organizations.   

Along with concerns about the Burke Law Group’s ability to provide adequate legal counsel, the likelihood that hundreds of cases will be moved to Texas is alarming to immigrant advocates, as the state is notorious  for making deportations easier. Immigration judges in Texas deny asylum claims at higher rates than in other states. And there are no state-level protections for unaccompanied minors or independent oversight of immigration detention facilities. 

Alexa Sendukas, the managing attorney for the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said that the outlook for unaccompanied immigrant children in the Texas judicial system has worsened under the Trump administration. She noted that children’s court proceedings have been expedited, with many cases being terminated by judges before children can be given an opportunity to tell their stories or provide evidence for why they should be granted federal protections. 

And the asylum petitions from immigrant children have been particularly targeted. The Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project has hundreds of asylum applications built up over five years and the courts have scheduled hearings for them in unprecedented numbers into the next few months, booking attorneys for as many as five appearances at the same time and refusing rescheduling requests. 

“Protections for abused and neglected children, as well as survivors of human trafficking, are not being honored in court and these children are being deported anyway,” Sendukas said. “No one is making sure they have family available to receive them or that it would even be safe for them to return.” 

In one case, an unaccompanied child who was deported was sent to a town hours away from where immigration authorities told his mother to pick him up and it was days before he was reunited with his family. 

The Florence Project has 300 pending asylum cases involving unaccompanied children, according to Avila-Cimpeanu, who said she is also concerned about their legal future. Similarly to the cases in Texas, the Florence Project is also seeing an uptick in asylum cases being called up for hearings in Arizona. 

And, Avila-Cimpeanu added, the possibility of the legal representation for its current clients being moved to Texas could imperil the ability of the children to be granted protection from deportation. Many children have cases that hinge on state juvenile court proceedings to apply for a humanitarian visa, and moving the children out of state or giving them Texas-based counsel could prolong or entirely scuttle that process, which is no longer available when the child turns 18. 

In the end, Avila-Cimpeanu warned, the Trump administration’s move to put the legal fate of more than a thousand immigrant children, many of whom are fleeing violence or sex trafficking, in the hands of an inexperienced law firm in Texas will only result in deportations. 

“Children are going to be sent back to harm, children are going to die because of this,” she said.