$200 Million Program that Gives Illegal Alien Minors Free Lawyers Reinstated Days after its Axed

A few days after suspending a $200 million annual program that provides illegal immigrant minors with free legal assistance, the Trump administration reinstated it and American taxpayer dollars will continue flowing to the leftist group that helps represent tens of thousands who have entered our country illegally. Little information is available involving the abrupt about face, why in the middle of drastic cuts to the U.S. federal workforce the administration has chosen to continue funding a controversial initiative that benefits illegal aliens. It is part of a billion-dollar commitment launched in 2022 by a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency known as Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to legally represent underage migrants, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), who cross the border without a parent. Over 600,000 UAC have crossed illegally into the U.S. through Mexico since 2019 and Uncle Sam spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house, educate, feed, entertain and medically treat them.

The Biden administration extended the services to legal representation, a costly benefit the Trump administration rightfully revoked only to quietly restore it days later. The money, a couple hundred million annually, goes to the Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that partners with a national network of human rights defenders to provide legal defense to immigrants at risk of detention or deportation. “Acacia envisions a nation with a transformed immigration system that embodies freedom from detention, due process, and equal protection, where every person facing the prospect of exile and community separation has access to meaningful legal defense,” the group writes on its website, which assures its network of attorneys fight for all immigrants regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or previous interaction with the criminal system.

The center’s executive director, Shaina Aber, celebrated the speedy reinstatement of the government’s multi-million-dollar UAC defense program, saying in a press release that “it is unconscionable” that children who arrive in the U.S. unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians should be forced to represent themselves in immigration court against a trained government attorney in an adversarial hearing before a judge, without even a child-friendly orientation or understanding of their legal options. “We welcome the news that the stop-work order on Acacia’s Unaccompanied Children Program has been lifted,” Aber said. “We will continue working alongside the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that these critical services upholding the basic due process rights of vulnerable children are fully restored and our partners in the legal field–legal lifelines safeguarding the rights and well-being of children seeking safety–can resume their work without future disruption or delay.”

Ironically, it does not always end well for UAC—overwhelmingly males over the age of 14 mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico—who are allowed to stay in the U.S. Under Biden the government failed to monitor hundreds of thousands of the underage migrants, putting them at high risk for trafficking, exploitation or forced labor. This may seem just as “unconscionable” as forcing the young migrants to represent themselves in immigration court, as the leftist attorney whose group is receiving millions from the government claims. A mainstream newspaper even published a scathing in-depth piece slamming the Biden administration for losing track of at least 85,000 illegal immigrant minors who ended up in dangerous jobs that violate the nation’s child labor laws, including in factories that make products for well-known American brands. A federal audit subsequently revealed that tens of thousands of UAC vanished from the government’s radar and that hundreds of thousands go unmonitored.

The government’s UAC program has for years been rocked by many other problems that have put underage migrants at risk, including physical and sexual abuse at U.S.-funded shelters. In 2021 Judicial Watch obtained records from HHS documenting 33 incidents of physical and sexual abuse during a one-month period at shelters where the government houses UAC until they are relocated with a sponsor. That year an HHS Inspector General report blasted the agency for failing to protect UAC from sexual misconduct at the facilities. Last summer the U.S. sued a nonprofit it has paid billions of dollars to house migrant youths for sexually abusing them for years. The Texas-based nonprofit, Southwest Key, is the government’s largest housing provider for illegal immigrant minors and operates 29 shelters. In its federal complaint the Justice Department claims the children the government pays it to shelter are raped, sexually abused, and harassed.