Trump Administration Has Withheld More Than $65 Million from Legal Representatives of Unaccompanied Children, Driving Them to the Brink of Closure and Leaving Children With No Protection or Knowledge of Their Legal Rights
Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today issued a statement ahead of the expected lapse of a federal contract this Friday that funds a network of legal service providers who assist unaccompanied children in navigating the legal system while they are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and after release.
“The Trump administration is quietly breaking the law and continuing to smother a federal office created and funded by Congress to protect children from trafficking and other dangers,” Wyden said. “Earlier this week, my staff witnessed a 6-year-old girl representing herself in immigration court. This is the future that MAGA wants: terrified children fending for themselves, unaware of their legal rights and protections. Not only is it illegal and in direct conflict with the will of Congress, it’s a moral stain on a nation that promises equal justice under law.
“I will continue to shine a spotlight on this shameful state of affairs while Republicans fail to uphold their constitutional responsibility to ensure the executive branch is obeying the will of the elected legislature. In the meantime, Trump, Robert Kennedy and other collaborators have blood on their hands as they continue to allow children to return to the dangerous conditions they fled in the first place with no assurances of their safety.”
Since Trump took office, Wyden has documented the systematic reorientation of ORR from a child welfare agency into an operational adjunct of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda and has spotlighted numerous attempts by the administration to undermine the rights and well-being of children in federal care. On June 24, Wyden demanded the immediate suspension of a reported plan to remove more than 500 unaccompanied children from ORR custody under an invented “voluntary repatriation” framework that has no basis in federal law.
The current legal representation crisis is the most acute front in that broader reorientation. For eight months, ORR has withheld payment to the network of legal service providers contracted to represent unaccompanied children, services already delivered, at costs already incurred, for children whom Congress mandated access to counsel under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 and continues to fund legal services through bipartisan appropriations, including most recently through the funding deal signed into law in February 2026. Providers are owed more than $65 million for legal services already provided to more than 20,000 unaccompanied children since November 2025. The federal contract that funds this network expires tomorrow on July 31, 2026, a legal representation cliff for tens of thousands of children in federal custody and post release, most of whom are eligible for statutory protection including asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. HHS has not identified a successor contractor, has provided no operational plan for the transition, and has offered no assurance that children currently represented will retain their attorneys.
A web version of this release is here.
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