HHS Set to Pay Houston Law Firm $150 Million to Represent Migrant Kids, Two of Its 24 Lawyers Do Immigration Work

The federal government is set to hand a Houston law firm $150 million to represent unaccompanied migrant children in immigration court, according to a notice scheduled to post to the Federal Register this week. The firm, Burke Law Group, has 24 attorneys. Two of them specialize in immigration and asylum law, according to NPR.

The contract covers a one-year period starting Aug. 15, according to the Texas Tribune. It's meant to provide legal orientation, consultation and attorney-of-record representation for unaccompanied children in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, plus referrals once kids are released, according to the notice cited by KJZZ.

Federal law has required for decades that migrant children without a guardian get legal protection during immigration proceedings, over concerns they could be trafficked or exploited. Many of these kids are toddlers. Without a lawyer, a child that young has essentially no shot at avoiding deportation regardless of the merits of their case.

Who is Burke Law Group

Burke Law Group's own website describes its focus as advising "companies on complex environmental, regulatory, and enforcement matters," according to NPR. Politico first reported that immigration law wasn't originally listed among the firm's practice areas at all, and was added for two attorneys only after the contract became public, according to KJZZ.

Co-founder Marcella Burke served in the first Trump administration at the Interior Department and the EPA. Founding partner Jeffrey Hall currently serves as an assistant administrator at the EPA, having been confirmed late last year, according to the Texas Tribune and NPR.

During Hall's confirmation hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., raised concerns about his record, saying Hall's work at Burke Law Group "focused on tearing down statutory protections meant to guarantee clean air and clean water, seeking to limit EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act, and gutting greenhouse gas regulations," according to NPR. That's a fair characterization of Whitehouse's stated objection, and voters can weigh it. The overlap between Burke Law Group's leadership and current Trump administration officials is a legitimate thing for oversight bodies to examine, given the size of the award and the firm's thin immigration track record.

Neither Burke Law Group nor HHS responded to requests for comment from NPR.

The old contract collapsed over a data fight

The new award comes right after a contract with a coalition of nearly 100 legal aid nonprofits, coordinated through the Acacia Center for Immigrant Rights, expired July 31 without renewal, according to KJZZ. That network represented roughly 20,000 immigrant children.

The Trump administration stopped paying those groups back in November, after they refused to hand over confidential client information, according to NPR. Acacia's executive director, Michael Lukens, said that data is protected by attorney-client privilege and told reporters Wednesday he believes any firm that signs on with HHS will be required to turn it over, according to both NPR and KJZZ.

The legal aid groups say the government owes them roughly $65 million for work already performed, and they're pursuing that money in an ongoing lawsuit. Attorneys were scheduled to be back in court Thursday asking a judge to force payment, according to KJZZ.

There's a real government-efficiency argument buried in this fight, separate from the politics. If HHS genuinely needs case-management data to track outcomes, audit spending, or prevent fraud in a $150 million program, that's not an unreasonable ask on its face. The legal aid groups' counterargument, that attorney-client privilege protects some of what's being demanded, is also legitimate. Neither side here has explained in public exactly what specific data points are in dispute, which makes it hard to judge who's right without seeing the actual data request.

What's on the ground now

Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu, deputy director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona, said her group has around 300 pending asylum cases for children and is now assessing new clients case-by-case because of the funding lapse, according to KJZZ. She said some legal aid groups can't take new clients at all without federal funding.

Avila-Cimpeanu also raised a practical concern: that clients could get funneled to a Texas-based firm, making continuity of representation harder for children whose cases are scattered across the country, according to KJZZ.

"Instead of taking care of these children, the government is instead implementing things such as awarding a contract to a private small law firm in Texas with no discernible experience in relevant immigration law or child welfare," Avila-Cimpeanu told NPR.

No investigation or formal challenge to the contract award itself has been announced. The lawsuit over the $65 million in unpaid legal aid funding is separate and ongoing, with a hearing expected Thursday. Whether Burke Law Group can staff up fast enough to represent thousands of children by an Aug. 15 start date, and whether HHS gets the data it's demanding, are both open questions with no public answers yet.