Mary Ellen Klas: Immigrant kids deserve to keep their lawyers

The Trump administration has jettisoned the way thousands of immigrant children receive legal help. On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services ended the contract with the Acacia Center for Justice after nearly two decades, leaving more than 20,000 unaccompanied kids in legal limbo.

Federal officials claim it’s a contract dispute. That’s a convenient excuse for their moral failure.

Federal immigration data shows that many of these children came to this country seeking refuge from harm. Some have been tortured and trafficked. Others were separated from their parents at the border. Most seek asylum, and many just want to be reunited with their families.

Congress recognized such trauma in 2008 when it passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which requires the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to provide legal representation for children navigating the immigration process. The Acacia Center for Justice was contracted by ORR to coordinate representation through a vast network of providers — lawyers, advocates, faith leaders and social workers.

But now this network clashes with what White House border czar Tom Homan calls its “deportation-maxxing” agenda. Although he promises to focus on arresting the “worst of the worst,” Homan’s strategy also involves targeting legal protections for vulnerable children so that the administration can accelerate their removal.

Administration officials have consistently defended child deportations by saying that “Children deserve to be with their parents.” They seem blind to the irony — that the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation policies have separated more than 205,000 children from their parents as of May of this year, forcing thousands into detention or foster care.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told me the agency “remains fully compliant with its legal and regulatory obligations” under the 2008 law.

But since November, its actions have defied that claim. HHS has refused to pay $65 million in overdue legal fees owed to the Acacia Center and its network of providers.

HHS says it’s withholding the money because the Acacia Center won’t turn over confidential information about its clients, including unredacted medical evaluations and details about their immigration cases. The center’s lawyers say that those demands force them to violate their attorney-client privilege and that the information has never been sought by any previous presidential administration — including during President Donald Trump’s first term.

HHS is also accusing the Acacia Center of fraud. Despite repeated questioning, however, HHS has provided no evidence to prove those fraud claims and, notably, makes the allegations exclusively in public statements, not in legal documents.

It’s all a smokescreen for the callous and calculated tactics HHS is employing. Since last September, the Department of Homeland Security has tried to coerce unaccompanied minor children to self-deport by telling them they could either give up their asylum claims and leave the country or face long-term detention. Many of these children have survived violence, separation and dangerous journeys. Thousands of Guatemalan children have come from persecuted Indigenous communities and were targeted for deportation until lawyers intervened.

Immigration advocates say the goal of ending the contract is to slowly destroy the program by grinding down the financial health of the nonprofit organizations providing the children’s safety net.

By withholding payment for services already provided, HHS has forced at least 40 law firms and service providers to lay off staff, withhold services and leave children without representation, said Bettina Rodriguez-Schlege, chief of staff of the Acacia Center, at a news conference Friday.

The impact on the kids may be profound. Prolonged uncertainty “can really deepen anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, with consequences that extend well into adulthood,” Dr. C. Nicholas Cuneo, an assistant professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who works with refugees, told reporters on Friday.

But a trusted attorney “can buffer that harm,” he added, by helping children understand an incomprehensible process, giving them a safe and stable environment, and connecting them with healthcare, schools, housing and other support.

Research also shows that when children go to court without an attorney, there’s a high likelihood they will lose their asylum claims and be deported back to the countries they fled.

Erin Maxwell, co-director of the Detained Immigrant Children’s Project, described how children who have been detained for months in crowded detention centers are wearing down and choosing “to return to extremely unsafe situations in their countries of origin because of detention fatigue.”

Money is not the problem here. Congress has set aside money for the legal representation of unaccompanied minors, although it’s never been enough to meet the need. And the Trump administration has repeatedly shown it can find the money when the president wants to spend it. The $65 million in services rendered owed to the Acacia Center is far less than the $101 million in federal money spent on “beautification projects” to prepare Washington for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration and the $600 million spent on a new White House ballroom.

By Monday, one of the Acacia Center’s partners, the International Rescue Committee, announced it would continue to represent unaccompanied children in immigration court despite the loss of funding. That’s promising, but it’s not sustainable.

Americans should be asking ourselves if we’re willing to scar a generation of young people so that this administration can pursue its anti-immigrant policies. Abandoned and powerless children are not the “worst of the worst.” They deserve nurturing and compassion, not hate.

____

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.