Children migrating and trying to stay in the United States will now have to go to court by themselves since the president has decided to stop federal funding for legal aid.
Donald Trump has ended an agreement with The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Project, a nonprofit organization that offers advice and legal support to undocumented minors who are on their own.
Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu, the Deputy Director, stated to AZ Central that the Unaccompanied Children Program has been essentially closed down due to the directive she received on Friday.
It means that migrant children now face the prospect of advocating for themselves in court against qualified government attorneys, often in a foreign language.
Avila-Cimpeanu said such children are ‘alone in the United States, detained by the government, separated from their loved ones, and survivors of abandonment, abuse and neglect’.
‘To strip away legal services for them while claiming to care about the safety of children is inhumane,’ she added.
Unlike criminal defendants, adults and children embroiled in deportation proceedings are not entitled to a public defender.
The order is latest step in Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration, which is now specifically targeting unaccompanied minors in a bid to hit the president’s deportation targets.
Migrant children fighting to remain in the US will face the courts alone following the president’s decision to pull the plug on federal funding for legal representatives
Donald Trump has axed a contract with The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Project, a nonprofit which provides counsel and legal services to undocumented, unaccompanied minors
An internal memo seen by Reuters confirmed the new focus for agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Avila-Cimpeanu said her charity’s services ‘are critical not only as a matter of fundamental fairness — children should not be asked to stand up in court alone against a trained government attorney — but also for protecting children from trafficking, abuse, and exploitation and for helping immigration courts run more efficiently.’
Trump ended the program in February, but restarted it after more than 24,000 people sent letters to Congress urging lawmakers to reconsider, according to the Acacia Center for Justice.
The center said around 26,000 children relied on legal under the program.
Yesterday, it was announced that the Trump administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States.
The announcement was made by Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem on a notice to a Federal Register in the latest expansion of the presidents clampdown immigration.
The order applies to about 532,000 people from the four countries who came to the United States since October 2022 under a program called CHNV that the Biden administration was heavily criticized for.
The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Project’s Deputy Director Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu said such children are, ‘alone in the United States, detained by the government, separated from their loved ones, and survivors of abandonment, abuse, and neglect’
The order is latest step in Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration, which is now specifically targeting unaccompanied minors in a bid to hit the president’s lofty deportation targets
The migrants losing legal status arrived with financial sponsors and were given two-year permits to live and work in the US.
Noem said they will lose their legal status on April 24, or 30 days after the publication of the notice in the Federal Register.
The new policy impacts people who are already in the US and who came under the humanitarian parole program.
Uncertainty still remains for some 240,000 Ukrainians who sought refuge in the US following the Russian invasion in 2021.
Trump was said to be considering ending their legal status even before recent tensions between Washington and Kyiv.
However, press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted previous reports about this as ‘fake news’, stating that no decision has been made.
Relations between the US and Ukraine have been strained since a now-infamous showdown between Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
Unlike criminal defendants, adults and children embroiled in deportation proceedings are not entitled to a public defender
The president immediately shutdown peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and kicked President Volodymyr Zelensky out of the White House after a blistering Oval shouting match.
Trump had threatened to abandon Ukraine completely if Zelenskyy did not agree to his peace terms. He also accused Zelensky of not being grateful.
Zelensky held his own, even showing Trump photos he brought of the devastation to his country, and arguing he had thanked the American people.
Now, the Trump administration is trying to get both Russia and Ukraine to sign on to a proposed ceasefire, but the fighting still rages on.
