Advocates and lawmakers are raising concerns over how the Trump administration is handling unaccompanied migrant children after a contract for legal services was allowed to expire.
The Department of Health and Human Services allowed a legal-services contract for the children to lapse and awarded a new $244 million contract to a nonprofit whose leadership has faced serious allegations, and a writer for Public Notice warned the moves put children in real danger.
"Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, is making his dreams come true: accelerating the arrest and removal of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant kids," wrote Anat Shenker-Osorio, a researcher and campaign strategist.
"The man behind family separation in the first Trump term who once boasted that policy would 'prove to be a migration deterrent' has now teamed up with another deadly threat, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to attack the most vulnerable kids in our country: those here on their own," the writer added.
By law, children who cross the border alone are placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than DHS or ICE — a structure meant to guarantee them legal counsel, appropriate housing and hearings with protections against trafficking and abuse.
HHS declined to renew the longstanding legal-aid contract after reportedly withholding roughly $65 million in payments to attorneys for seven months, but the nonprofits sued and won a court order for back pay. HHS then awarded a new $244 million contract to Our Rescue, an anti-trafficking NGO whose founder has been accused of sex trafficking and abuse, and whose CEO previously ran a sting operation as a DHS agent involving a fake university used to arrest foreign students.
The Guardian has reported that children as young as three years old have appeared via video link in New York immigration court for deportation hearings without attorneys present, in what critics say violates federal protections for unaccompanied minors.
Roughly 24,000 children are affected nationwide, with about 1,800 currently held in ORR facilities as of June — some in states, including Texas, Florida and South Carolina, where facilities have lost state licensing and oversight. Legal experts cited in the reporting say children are being held an average of 194 days, far beyond the 20-day limit set by law.
The administration has also sought a contractor for a facility to hold up to 3,000 children in Texas and reportedly proposed converting a former military base in Louisiana into a second site. Separately, local police under federal 287(g) agreements have been paid for assisting in enforcement involving children, per reporting cited in the piece.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to HHS in June objecting to the rapid removal of about 500 children, calling it a departure from "core humanitarian and child welfare mandates." Some critics argue congressional Democrats overall have responded to the situation with muted public pressure.