Key legal resource for immigrant kids to expire with federal contract, advocates say

WASHINGTON — Bryan Chavez knows that having access to legal representation as an unaccompanied minor can be a lifeline.

In 2017, immigration officials separated him from his mother and brother at the southern border, as they were caught up in the family separation policy of the first Trump administration. 

The 15-year-old remained in a detention center for children, knowing that if he were sent back to Mexico, he would likely die at the hands of the cartel who threatened to kill him, his brother and father. 

“Everything changed when attorneys from (the Immigration Defenders Law Center) arrived,” he told reporters during a press conference Friday. “For the first time, someone explained what was happening. As a child, I couldn't understand why I was being separated from my mother.”

Chavez, who is now a case worker at the same center that provided him legal services as an unaccompanied minor, worries about what will happen to the thousands of immigrant children who are set to lose their legal representation at midnight Saturday. 

That’s because the Trump administration declined to renew a federal contract with nonprofits that provide legal aid services to more than 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children. 

Chavez, along with a handful of advocates and attorneys for immigrant children, detailed their concerns during a virtual press conference about the end of the contract. 

They warned that it will lead to children being quickly deported, because without a lawyer, fewer than 10% of immigrant children win the right to remain in the United States while their case goes through immigration court. 

“For many of them, an attorney can be the difference between fear and hope, separation and reunification, or even life and death,” Chavez said. “I came to this country asking for help. The children I work with today are asking for the same thing.”

No reimbursements to lawyers

For more than six months, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has not reimbursed $65 million to the Acacia Center for Justice, which distributes the federal funding to roughly 100 organizations across the country who provide legal representation to unaccompanied children in immigration cases. 

The Acacia Center for Justice has said those funds are being withheld because attorneys refused to hand over to the Trump administration sensitive case data from the unaccompanied children, such as medical records and the types of legal relief the minors are seeking. 

“For months, Acacia has been negotiating in good faith with the government to find a way to continue representing unaccompanied children who would be left without their trusted lawyers, and at the whims of an administration that seems intent on finding new and crueler ways to target and deport them as quickly as possible,” said Bilal Askaryar, communications director at the Acacia Center for Justice.

HHS did not respond to States Newsroom's request for comment. 

‘A lot of uncertainty’

The Acacia Center for Justice’s chief of staff, Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel, said that on Wednesday, government officials submitted a solicitation notice giving the Acacia Center for Justice time to transition legal services to another provider. 

Rodriguez Schlegel said she doesn't know for sure to whom the Trump administration will contract legal services, but the administration is eyeing a small Texas state commission that aids low-income people with criminal defense representation. 

“What will happen on Monday morning when kids go to court?” she asked. “There remains a lot of uncertainty and a great deal of concern.”

Sensitive job

Additionally, with the contract ending, children who have experienced trauma will have to recount painful experiences to attorneys who might not have the proper training. That can cause more anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress for kids, said Dr. C. Nicholas Cuneo.

Cuneo is an assistant professor of pediatrics and medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the executive director at HEAL Refugee Health and Asylum Collaborative, which provides trauma-informed healthcare services to immigrants.

“A trusted attorney can buffer that harm, explaining an incomprehensible process, providing consistency and safety, protecting a child's interests, and connecting them to healthcare, school, housing, and other essential support,” he said. “Abruptly severing that relationship can not only reactivate the abandonment and powerlessness from which children are trying to recover, but really cause direct physical and mental health injury.”

Cuneo said Congress recognized those consequences, and created the Unaccompanied Children Program to provide funding for legal representation of migrant children. 

Erin Maxwell, a social worker at Legal Services for Children in California, said so much of their training is in providing trauma-informed legal services.

“I'm afraid that if a group of attorneys that were not trained on working with children, were not trained on providing trauma-informed legal services, that children wouldn't be able to fully participate in their cases (to share their stories),” she said.