26,000 Migrant Children Face Immigration Court Alone as Federal Legal Contract Expires

Unaccompanied children legal representation across the United States is collapsing this week, with roughly 26,000 minors who crossed the border without parents or guardians expected to lose access to independent attorneys as early as Monday, according to lawyers who have been handling their cases.

The cause is not a change in law. It is a funding dispute that has now run for more than eight months.

The System That Existed

For over twenty years, federal law has required protection for children who arrive at the border alone, based on the recognition that minors in that situation are unusually vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and trafficking.

Children who cross unaccompanied are generally transferred into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. From there, a network of nearly 100 legal organizations, funded through congressional appropriations, has provided them with legal services.

That structure ended when the contract expired Friday. ORR chose not to renew it.

How the Breakdown Started

The dispute traces back to November, when ORR halted payments to the legal providers.

The trigger was a refusal. The agency had requested confidential information about the children, and the attorneys declined to hand it over, citing attorney-client privilege.

The Acacia Center for Justice, the nonprofit administering the legal services contract with ORR, put its position bluntly in a Thursday statement. The organization said the government is withholding payment for work already completed as a means of extracting confidential information about children, material it argues the government has no entitlement to.

What Happens Without Lawyers

The practical consequence is that children may find themselves facing immigration proceedings on their own.

Alexa Sendukas, an attorney with the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, described what that means in outcomes rather than abstractions. She said unaccompanied children without legal counsel succeed in securing the right to remain in the United States less than 1 percent of the time.

Her broader assessment was stark. She noted these children arrived seeking safety and protection, said the administration is effectively asking attorneys to abandon them entirely, and expressed fear that some will be returned to dangerous circumstances and that some may be killed.

A statistic under 1 percent is not a difficult case rate. It describes a system in which representation is effectively the deciding variable.

The Money Owed

A coalition of legal nonprofits filed suit last year seeking a court order compelling the government to pay what it owes, approximately $65 million, and to continue funding services going forward.

Eight months without payment has produced predictable damage to the organizations themselves.

Lauren Fisher Flores, legal director at ProBAR, an American Bar Association project serving children in ORR custody, said in a July 31 statement that the loss of funding for children’s immigration work forced the organization to lay off more than 20 percent of its staff that week.

Those reductions are not easily reversed. Experienced immigration attorneys who leave for other work do not typically return on short notice.

An Unclear Replacement

On July 29, Acacia received notice that ORR was considering a new contract, potentially involving different legal providers. Details were sparse.

Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel of Acacia said it remains unknown who any new contractor would be and that the agency has not responded to questions posed to it, leaving substantial uncertainty and concern.

Neither ORR nor the White House responded to requests for comment.

Who Is Actually in Custody

Agency figures showed nearly 1,800 children in ORR custody in June.

Under a 2008 law, ORR carries an obligation to promptly place children with sponsors in the United States who can care for them. Current practice falls short of that standard by a wide margin: children were held an average of 194 days before release to sponsors.

Attorneys representing these children describe that duration as unusually long and harmful to the health and safety of the minors involved. More than six months in custody is a substantial portion of a childhood.

The Services Being Lost

The network’s work extended well beyond courtroom representation.

Lawyers routinely delivered presentations to children entering ORR care, explaining their rights in terms a minor could understand. They also conducted screenings to identify which legal protections each child might qualify for.

That screening function matters enormously. Children who have been trafficked or abused are entitled to specific protections under law, but those protections only apply if someone identifies the circumstances and files accordingly. A child cannot be expected to recognize their own eligibility.

Several attorneys in the network told NPR they will no longer be able to provide some of these services.

Attorneys Showing Up Anyway

Despite the expired contract and the unpaid invoices, some lawyers say they will not walk away from existing clients.

Mickey Donovan, director of legal services at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, framed it as a matter of professional obligation. He said attorneys cannot simply drop a case, and that skipping a hearing because the government stopped paying is not an option.

He said his organization will be in court Monday, introducing themselves to children and doing what they can to prevent deportations.

What Is Unresolved

Several questions hang over the coming weeks.

The lawsuit seeking payment and continued funding remains pending, and a ruling could alter the situation substantially.

The identity and capacity of any replacement contractor is unknown, as is how quickly new providers could be onboarded and brought up to speed on active cases.

And the underlying dispute over confidential information has not been settled. The attorneys’ refusal rests on privilege, a principle that does not typically bend to funding pressure, which suggests the standoff may persist regardless of who holds the contract.

For the children scheduled to appear in immigration court this week, none of that will be resolved in time.