Legal Aid Contract for Migrant Children Lapses Friday as Asylum Interviews Get Fast-Tracked

A federal contract funding legal representation for unaccompanied migrant children expired Friday, according to The Guardian, cutting off a major source of lawyers for thousands of kids navigating the immigration system alone.

The contractor, Acacia Center for Justice, says the government owes it roughly $65 million and stopped paying in December, months before letting the deal lapse entirely, per The Guardian. The Department of Health and Human Services, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement oversees care for unaccompanied minors, disputes the framing. HHS says it offered Acacia a second bridge contract that required data on who the group represents and billing tied to specific relief applications filed. Acacia turned it down, according to HHS's written statement to The Guardian.

HHS isn't saying it wants to cut legal aid for kids. It's saying it wanted more accountability and transparency on where the money was going before cutting another check. Taxpayers funding a $65 million legal aid contract with clearer reporting requirements isn't an unreasonable ask on its face. Whether Acacia's refusal was about principle, capacity, or contract terms it viewed as unworkable isn't fully spelled out in the available record.

While the funding fight played out, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has dramatically accelerated the pace of asylum interviews for unaccompanied children, according to New York Focus. Rachel Jordan, managing attorney at the Safe Passage Project, told the outlet her organization went from four or five interviews scheduled between 2024 and early this year to about 30 scheduled between late July and August alone.

Emily Norman, East Coast regional director at Kids in Need of Defense, told New York Focus her organization recently got notice of more than 50 asylum interviews scheduled for New York City-area clients in August and September, up from less than one a month historically. She said similar surges are hitting Houston, Newark, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.

Those interviews are not small stakes. An asylum officer with USCIS spends hours trying to determine whether a child faced qualifying persecution back home. Win, and the child is protected from deportation with a path to permanent residency. Lose, and the only route left runs through immigration courts that have grown more hostile to asylum claims, per New York Focus.

The administration also issued a new rule this week, per New York Focus, letting asylum officers skip the interview altogether and send a child's claim directly to immigration court. The practical effect of that rule is still unclear, but it removes a step that previously gave kids a shot at resolving their case outside adversarial court proceedings.

Rachel Jordan told New York Focus: "It really does seem to be a targeted push against unaccompanied children to speed up their removal proceedings in any way possible." No official has been quoted confirming that intent as the explicit goal.

Ten current and former prosecutors sent DHS a letter this week raising a different alarm, according to The Guardian: that fast-tracking deportations for children strips away decades-old federal protections meant to shield trafficking and abuse victims who might otherwise testify against their abusers. "By arresting and deporting survivors who have come forward and applied for protection, the Administration not only risks endangering the survivor and their family members, but the Government also sends a chilling message to the larger community: don't call the police, don't report crime – you or your loved ones will get deported," the letter states, as quoted by The Guardian.

Maggy Krell, a California assembly member and former prosecutor who spent two decades on human-trafficking cases, told The Guardian that stripping legal protections from unaccompanied minors makes it easier for traffickers and abusers to escape accountability, since those crimes are already vastly underreported.

Unaccompanied children have no guaranteed right to a government-paid attorney in immigration proceedings, unlike criminal defendants. That's been true for years regardless of administration. The combination of interviews scheduled at many times the historical rate, a rule allowing bypass of those interviews entirely, and the funding stream for lawyers representing these kids drying up in the same stretch of weeks is what stands out now.

The open question is what happens to the thousands of children who now have interview dates on the calendar but no attorney to prepare them. Groups like Safe Passage Project, Kids in Need of Defense, and The Door say they're being asked to absorb dozens of cases at once with no comparable funding replacement in place. HHS has not detailed a specific plan for how legal representation gets covered going forward, beyond noting it remains "fully compliant with its legal and regulatory obligations," per its statement to The Guardian.