Up to 24,000 children may lose legal representation as the contract expires

More than 24,000 immigrant children who arrived in the US without a parent or guardian and are facing deportation could lose access to legal representation this week when an agency's contract to fund nonprofit legal services expires, leaving some agencies to cut back or eliminate aid altogether.

The cuts are combined with the Trump administration's refusal to reimburse nonprofits about $65 million for legal services they already provide to unaccompanied immigrant children — payments the organizations argue they are entitled to under federal law.

Friday's contract expiration, law enforcement officials said, will affect about 90 organizations across the country, including several in California.

Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director and founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which serves 13 agencies in Greater Los Angeles, said at a news conference Wednesday that more than 1,500 unaccompanied minors her organization represents will be affected.

Toczylowski said other organizations in the LA area that will be affected include the Public Counsel, the Central American Resource Center and the Immigration Center for Women and Children.

“I think about the clients I have personally represented over the years – victims of trafficking, asylum seekers, children separated from their parents – and I wonder what chance children like them will have if there is no one to fight for them,” she said. “Lawyers are often the only independent witnesses in the immigration process. … [They] be the ones who expose exploitation, document illegal situations, expose government failures and ensure that children's rights are not violated.”

Toczylowski said it was the lawyers who filed the legal petitions for the two young girls – aged 6 and 15 – to be reunited with their families after being held in custody for seven months.

In other parts of the country, some organizations say they are forced to end the lack of laws for children who did not attend.

That's the case with Melissa Lopez of Estrella El Paso, a nonprofit organization that provides such services in El Paso, Texas, the state and New Mexico. Lopez said her organization can't fund its own unaccompanied minors legal system in west Texas.

“We're owed a lot of money — about a million dollars — for our program,” Lopez said. “We cannot continue this program without this contract.”

He said he will arrive on Friday afternoon, and he will have to shut down the staff working on the program they have spent 20 years developing.

Lopez said the loss would be huge in the region, which he described as a “legal desert.”

“We're in a place where there aren't enough public defenders regardless of what kind of case you have,” she said.

El Paso, he said, also has one of the largest detention centers in the US

Meena Shah, executive director of legal services at Door, a nonprofit organization in New York, says the federal government owes her organization nearly $2 million for legal services it provided to unaccompanied minors. She worries about losing access to her clients and other children, who will now be forced to navigate the complex immigration process alone.

“It's silly to think that a child can stand up for themselves,” he said, “and I think any reasonable adult would agree with that.”

The problems began in March 2025, when the US Department of Health and Human Services terminated its federal contract with the Acacia Center for Justice in Washington. The nonprofit contracts with approximately 100 legal service providers across the country representing tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors. The contract was up for renewal that month.

That prompted the center and a coalition of nonprofit law enforcement agencies to file a federal-class action lawsuit against the agency and the Trump administration, alleging they violated the William Wilberforce Victims of Trafficking Authorization Act, a federal law passed by Congress in 2008.

The law ensures that unaccompanied minors have legal counsel to represent them in legal proceedings and protect them from abuse, exploitation and trafficking.

Since the enactment of this law, Congress has provided funding for the national program. In 2024, it set aside nearly $5 billion to fund the program through September 2027.

In June 2025, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the Acacia Center for Justice contract and continue funding the program. Since then, the contract has been extended, but is expected to expire on Friday.

Problems worsened in November when the Trump administration stopped paying its invoices as it demanded that the Acacia Center and its subcontractors provide information about clients of legal services providers that they said violated their right to counsel.

The nonprofit coalition says a court hearing is scheduled for August 6 to address the issues.

Legal service providers say the heart of the issue is maintaining due process, protecting children from exploitation and ensuring that the federal government follows its own laws.

Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the Trump administration's refusal to defund the nonprofit is an attempt to stop them from doing so.

“It is clear that they are trying to destroy this program by grinding the financial health of non-profit organizations,” he said. “We've seen layoffs and layoffs, and we're going to see more of that if these invoices aren't paid.”

Last month, Kids in Need of Defense said in a written statement that it was canceling its subcontract with the Acacia Center for Justice after it raised more than $20 million in unpaid legal fees to help immigrant children.

But also in June, US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), a former immigration law professor, reintroduced the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, a bill that would provide unaccompanied minors with legal representation during immigration court proceedings.

“It is heartbreaking and senseless to see children as young as 4 years old, unable to speak English, come to immigration court to face these complex processes alone,” he said in a statement at the time.

Many current and former state and local prosecutors have sent a letter signed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raising law enforcement and humanitarian concerns about the system ending without a set plan.

Toczylowski said ending the program that helps high-risk immigrants should be viewed as an attack on children and Americans should be alarmed.

“If you take lawyers away from children, you're not just taking away legal representation, you're taking away another important check on government misconduct,” she said. “We have always said that our presence next to a child in court is one of the things that gives us a chance to fight for justice in our broken immigration system.”