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NY migrant children face having to go it alone in immigration court
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Jul 31, 2026
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By
Arya Sundaram
Published Jul 31, 2026
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More than 1,400 migrant children across New York state, including over 700 in New York City, face the potential loss of assistance from immigration attorneys as a federal contract that funds the representation expires on Friday with no new agreement in sight, according to Sierra Kraft, director of Immigrant Children Advocates' Relief Effort.
Ending is a $200 million federal contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, the national nonprofit that manages agreements with 90 legal service providers across the country to represent unaccompanied migrant children, who were younger than 18 when they entered the United States.
“ This is a very real risk that we anticipate will start Monday morning: that we will have children across New York City, across the United States’ immigration courts, that will be appearing alone,” said Meena Shah, managing director of legal services at the Door, a New York City-based nonprofit immigration legal services provider for children.
A spokesperson for the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the federal contract, said the agency offered the Acacia Center an opportunity to extend the contract, but the parties couldn’t agree on terms. The administration, which had sought to terminate the contract sooner, is in the second year of an immigration crackdown that has targeted both legal and illegal immigration, with young children in the crosshairs as well.
The 1,400 migrant children in New York state are among over 24,000 unaccompanied minors across the country who face the loss of legal assistance, according to the Acacia Center for Justice.
Barring a new agreement, Shah said, judges will ask immigrant children to move forward with their cases, hand them documents in languages they don’t speak, ask them about the immigration charges against them, or give them a blank asylum application to fill out in two weeks, with their possible deportation hanging in the balance.
”And those children will be in front of those judges, having to make these decisions on their own,” Shah added.
The unaccompanied minors are children who arrive in the country without parents or legal guardians, and typically come with aunts, uncles or older siblings instead. In immigration court, low-income respondents aren’t guaranteed lawyers, unlike in criminal court.
The Trump administration abruptly canceled the contract with Acacia Center in March of last year, leaving some children in New York as young as 4 appearing before immigration judges alone, Gothamist previously reported. But a federal judge in April ordered the government to reverse that decision and restore funding. However, that contract is now set to expire, with no plans for renewal.
Generally, immigrants who have legal representation fare significantly better than those who do not. Immigration attorneys help people understand their rights and navigate complex immigration court procedures — and are especially crucial for children, who may be especially unaware of what’s happening, circumstances of their coming to the country, or conditions of concern in their home countries, according to Emily Norman, the East Coast director for Kids in Need of Defense, an immigration legal group.
A new “bridge” contract offered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement would have required Acacia Center to provide additional data on who it represents, according to ORR and Acacia Center. Bilal Askaryar, a spokesperson for the organization, said the requested data was too sensitive, prompting the refusal.
The contract's end comes as the federal government has failed to pay the organizations over $65 million for work since December, according to Acacia Center. Shah said The Door is owed almost $2 million. Norman said over $25 million is owed to Kids in Need in Defense nationwide.
New York City has provided nearly $17 million this fiscal year to fund lawyers for unaccompanied children and families, according to the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. However, immigration legal providers say that extra funding doesn’t cover the gap in funding from the lapsed federal contract.
The lapse in federal funding also comes as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to deport unaccompanied migrant children, including moving up dates of the children’s immigration court hearings and asylum interviews, according to immigration lawyers.
While the Trump administration and its proponents contend that the stepped-up scheduling is helping reduce the massive immigration court backlog, immigration attorneys and advocates say that the expedited timelines are denying immigrants proper time to prepare for important hearings and interviews.
“ It's just an overall project to railroad kids and not grant them due process that they're deserving of,” said Kraft, with New York City-based ICARE.
Children are being scheduled for follow-up immigration court hearings sometimes just as little as 10 days in the future, according to Kraft. Under prior administrations, such hearings would usually be scheduled three to six months in the future.
And many more children are being scheduled for asylum interviews, according to immigration lawyers. The group Kids in Need of Defense says it has over 50 asylum interviews scheduled for the next month or so, which it was only notified about weeks ago.
The Door has over 28 such asylum interviews scheduled in the next four to six weeks. Both groups say they normally have just a handful of such interviews in a given year, often scheduled months in advance.
“I believe this is a coordinated effort to wrap up these cases as soon as possible to deport these kids,” Shah said.
With extremely short notice, children may not be properly prepared for their asylum interviews, which often involve recounting painful experiences in their home countries, said Norman with Kids in Need of Defense. And with such a large caseload of interviews in a short period of time, attorneys say they’re struggling to properly prepare all the children involved.
If children are struggling with post-traumatic stress, attorneys may also request a psychological evaluation — but they may now be unable to do so with such short notice, Norman added. And if a child is denied asylum in an interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, their case proceeds to immigration court, where the government will seek to deport them.
“This really restricts our ability to represent a child in the way that we think they should be represented,” Norman said.
Norman added that it’s been challenging to explain all the latest complications to children — and the possibility that they might not have an attorney.
“The system, even in the best of circumstances, is extremely complicated,” Norman added. “Trying to explain all of this to a child client… that’s a lot for an individual person to try to comprehend and explain.”
Tagged
Race And Justice Unit
immigration
new york state
Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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