Legal Services Group provides representatives and guidance to thousands Immigrant children Facing the deportation, they were suddenly directed by the Trump administration to block their administration-funded work.
Affected organizations The move will prevent them from providing critical legal services, including "Know Your Rights" meetings to immigrant children crossing the southern U.S. border without parents or legal guardians.
Under U.S. law, the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for housing unaccompanied immigrant minors who have no legal authorization to enter the United States until they turn 18 or can be placed with sponsors, who are often relatives in the United States, which are not for profit Organizations provide funding for these children’s legal counsel – whether in detention or after being released from government care), while immigration judges decide whether they can stay in the United States
The Acacia Justice Center, an organization that oversees major federal contract funding legal services for immigrant children, received an order Friday directing the group to "stop all work" under the contract immediately. CBS News.
Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Justice Center, said her organization has nearly 100 subcontractors providing legal services to approximately 26,000 immigrant children nationwide, sometime in HHS detention, which oversees a children’s online shelter.
Abbott said the stop work order will immediately stop funds to understand your rights introduction and legal screenings, and these attorneys conducted legal screenings shortly after immigrant children arrived in the U.S. to determine whether they are eligible to allow them to stay legally Welfare in the country. These benefits may include asylum, people who flee persecution, and abuse, neglected or abandoned youth visas.
But Abbot said the suspension of the contract would also force nonprofits to use their own funds to continue representing immigrant children in immigration courts, noting that attorneys have an ethical obligation to clients and cannot simply give up the case. She said it is unclear how long the organization can execute without federal support, as immigrant youth usually have no financial means to pay the lawyer’s fees.
"I think children's due process rights will reach new lows," Abbe said in an interview.
The Interior Department issued a stop-work order to Aber's group, she said she managed federal contracts for her organization even if the funding came from HHS. Neither department responded to a request for comment.
Various immigration nonprofits that received funding under federal contracts have suspended protesting government decisions, including the California-based Immigration Defender Law Center, Texas-based Estrella del Paso and Illinois-based National Immigration Justice Center.
"The Trump administration abandons children for politics and lets children deceive themselves against our complex immigration system," said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigration Defenders Law Center.
It is unclear exactly what prompted the stop-work order, but the Trump administration has been actively slashing federal spending so much that it believes its policy views, including immigration, are wasted and misaligned. For example, the administration has also issued a stop-work order to nonprofits that relocate new immigrants under the U.S. refugee program, which President Trump has suspended.
The Trump administration has made other policy changes that affect unaccompanied immigrant children.
Last week, officials Refugee Resettlement OfficeHHS branches that care about unaccompanied children have greatly tightened the review process for those seeking detainees of minors. Under policy changes, all adults in families applying for sponsor immigrant children will need to submit fingerprints for background checks, not just the potential sponsors themselves.
The Trump administration has also been working to expand cooperation between refugee agencies and U.S. immigration and customs enforcement, a prospect that shocked advocates if they are illegally in the U.S., which they say will prevent some family members from sponsoring immigrant children. The government installed a former ICE official to run the refugee office.
Trump administration officials said it is necessary to protect immigrant children from exploitation and trafficking. They accused the Biden administration of facing an influx of historic influx of unaccompanied children across the southern border, not enough to track and protect these minors.
Neha Desai, a lawyer at the National Youth Law Center, a group representing immigrant children in federal court cases, said the suspension of the lawsuit to fund lawyers undermined the Trump administration’s stated objectives, calling it “ Reckless.”
"Unrepresentative unaccompanied children are more likely to be exploited, including child labour and trafficking," Desai said.
