The Trump Administration let a nationwide legal-services contract expire while owing providers millions for work already performed. A judge has now ordered payments, but who will represent thousands of children remains unsettled.
By Roberto Zapatero
Independent Forensic Investigative Journalist, Is America Better Yet?
August 13, 2026
About 1,400 children in New York are among thousands nationwide whose legal representation was put at risk when a federal contract supporting lawyers for unaccompanied immigrant children expired July 31.
Many of these children are already facing deportation cases. Some are living in federal shelters. Others have been released to parents, relatives or other sponsors while their cases continue.
The children are not defendants in criminal court. They are in the civil immigration system, where the government has a lawyer but immigrants generally are not entitled to a government-paid attorney.
Congress created an added protection for children who arrive in the United States without a parent or legal guardian.
Federal law says the Department of Health and Human Services must ensure, “to the greatest extent practicable,” that unaccompanied children who have been in federal custody have lawyers to represent them and protect them from mistreatment, exploitation and trafficking. The law also tells HHS to make every practical effort to use free, or pro bono, lawyers.
For years, much of that work was coordinated through the Acacia Center for Justice, which worked with a nationwide network of nearly 100 legal-service providers.
That system is now being replaced, and the transition has been anything but orderly.
More than $65 million was unpaid
Before the contract expired, Acacia and its providers said the federal government had stopped paying for months of legal work already performed.
The amount exceeded $65 million, according to Acacia and reporting by the Times Union. HHS described the matter as a contract dispute. Acacia said the government had sought sensitive client information that the organization believed could not properly be disclosed. IABY has not reviewed the underlying government request and therefore cannot independently determine exactly what information was demanded or whether every item Acacia withheld was legally privileged.
The payment problem was not merely theoretical.
On August 6, a federal judge ordered the government to pay legal-service providers that had gone unpaid. By August 12, Acacia said providers had begun receiving money covering six of nine months owed, with the remaining payments still being processed.
The payments address old bills.
They do not answer the larger question: Who represents the children now?
The proposed replacement changed within days
The government initially announced plans involving Burke Law Group, a small Houston firm.
That plan is no longer happening.
On August 12, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement told The Associated Press that Burke Law Group had declined to apply and “has not been awarded any grant.”
A temporary $20 million contract has instead gone to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants through the end of 2026. The government has also awarded work worth up to $244 million to Our Rescue, an anti-trafficking organization formerly known as Operation Underground Railroad.
But changing a government contract does not instantly change a lawyer in a courtroom.
AP reported that attorneys from the temporary provider began appearing in some immigration cases without having previously met the children, while lawyers from the old network were still trying to fulfill their professional obligations to existing clients.
That is more than an administrative problem.
A lawyer representing a child may have spent months or years learning the child's history, gathering records, identifying possible legal protections and preparing a case. That relationship cannot simply be transferred like a government invoice.
Tens of thousands of cases are involved
Legal providers from the expired network reported that roughly 1,800 children were living in federal shelters and about 22,000 children facing deportation were living with sponsors when the old arrangement ended.
In New York alone, the Times Union identified about 1,400 children, including approximately 700 upstate, whose representation was affected by the expiration of the Acacia contract. Nine New York organizations had participated in the network.
It would be inaccurate to say that every one of these children suddenly had no lawyer on July 31. Some existing providers have continued working. Temporary federal arrangements are operating. Other organizations may find private or charitable funding.
But the public record supports a narrower and still serious finding:
The federal government allowed the established legal-services arrangement to expire before a stable replacement system for thousands of existing child clients was in place.
And the old providers were simultaneously trying to continue that work while awaiting payment for services they had already performed.
What the law requires — and what it does not
The legal distinction matters.
Federal immigration law generally gives a person the right to hire a lawyer in removal proceedings, but specifies that the representation is at no expense to the government.
Unaccompanied children have an additional statutory protection.
Under the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, HHS must ensure access to counsel for these children “to the greatest extent practicable.”
That language is not the same as an absolute guarantee that the government must pay for a lawyer in every immigration case.
It is also not permission to ignore the issue.
The law places an affirmative duty on HHS to make a serious effort to ensure these children have counsel.
Whether the government's current patchwork of temporary and replacement arrangements satisfies that obligation is a legal question that remains under dispute.
The next question
The story is no longer simply that a federal contract expired.
The government has begun paying some of the overdue bills. One proposed replacement contractor has dropped out. Temporary lawyers are appearing in court. New contracts are being established.
But the children and their cases did not disappear when the contract ended.
The records now needed are straightforward: the number of children who had lawyers on July 31; the number who have lawyers today; how many existing attorney-client relationships were interrupted; how cases are being transferred; how much of the overdue money remains unpaid; and what standards HHS is using to determine whether the new system provides representation “to the greatest extent practicable,” as federal law requires.
Those numbers will show whether this was merely a difficult contract transition — or whether children were left without legal protection while the government rebuilt a system it had already allowed to expire.
Sources reviewed
U.S. Code, 8 U.S.C. §1232(c)(5) — federal requirement concerning access to counsel for unaccompanied children.
U.S. Code, 8 U.S.C. §1362 — general right to counsel in removal proceedings at no expense to the government.
Associated Press, August 12, 2026 — replacement-contract developments, court-ordered payments and current provider arrangements.
Times Union, August 9, 2026 — New York caseload, Acacia contract expiration and payment dispute.
Acacia Center for Justice, July 21, 2026 — provider account of the contract expiration and unpaid legal services.