The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is facing a lawsuit brought by various organizations for the agency's decision to cut legal aid for migrant children.
The move comes as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up his efforts to address the issue of immigration within the United States. The organizations that filed the lawsuit against the HHS are the ones responsible for providing legal aid to migrant children.
HHS Faces Lawsuit
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday and notes that some of the groups that received federal grants were forced to stop taking on new clients. They were allegedly forced to "face the real threat of not being able to continue their ongoing representations" due to the HHS's latest efforts.
Groups that collectively received more than $200 million in federal grants were told last week that the contract was partially terminated. This meant that the funding for legal representation and for the recruitment of attorneys to represent migrant children was ending, according tonABC News.
There are currently about 26,000 migrant children who are recipients of legal representation through the funding. The groups filed the lawsuit against the HHS in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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The groups are now asking a federal judge to issue an injunction on the matter and block the HHS from preventing funding for legal representation for unaccompanied children from pushing through.
One of the organizations affected by the funding cut is the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, which lost about $900,000 following the HHS severing contracts with Acacia. The latter is a non-profit organization that provides assistance and coordinates legal aid for unaccompanied migrant children, Queen City News reported.
Funding Cuts for Legal Aid for Migrant Children
Ruth Santana, who is the head of the Center's Immigrant Justice Program, said that the immigrant children will still be required to show up in court and be by themselves. She also showed data that revealed immigration judges are 100 times less likely to grant relief to unaccompanied children when the latter do not have legal counsel.
What makes matters worse is that defendants do not typically have access to public defenders for civil immigration cases. Santana noted that it is the "responsibility of the respondent or rather the person who has to appear before immigration court to then get an attorney to represent them."
One of the major funding cuts was to Acacia, which was informed last week by the government that the HHS was terminating nearly all the legal work it does. Ailin Buigues, the head of the center's unaccompanied children program, said the situation was "extremely concerning" because it leaves kids without any real support, as per the New York Daily News.
