Today marks the final day of the U.S. government’s contract with the Unaccompanied Children Program, a network of more than 100 organizations, administered by the Acacia Center for Justice, that provides crucial legal services to immigrant and refugee children in the United States. By allowing the contract to expire, the Trump administration is abandoning over 20,000 children currently served by the program, who will lose access to their attorneys overnight.
“For over 10 years, CGRS has had the honor of supporting attorneys representing children seeking asylum through the Unaccompanied Children Program, providing expert technical assistance and training to help them develop their clients’ legal cases,” Moira Duvernay, Deputy Director at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) said today. “We have seen firsthand the life-saving difference that legal representation makes for vulnerable children fleeing persecution, trafficking, and violence. These children desperately need an advocate in their corner to keep them safe and to ensure their due process rights and best interests are respected. While our contract expires today, we urge the administration to honor its legal obligations to these children and ensure that those who have received services through the program are not left to fend for themselves. Forcing these children to navigate our immigration system alone would be unfathomably cruel.”
Preparing a case for asylum requires a deep understanding of complicated immigration laws and the ability to gather robust country-specific and forensic evidence. Fewer than one percent of children navigating immigration proceedings without legal representation win any form of relief from deportation. That is why Congress has, on a bipartisan basis, long mandated that the government provide counsel to unaccompanied children, to ensure that their legal claims are evaluated fully and fairly. The Trump administration’s gutting of the Unaccompanied Children Program defies that mandate and will accelerate deportations of children to countries where their lives may be at grave risk.