Legal Aid Groups Battle for Unpaid Fees Amidst Contractual Chaos
On Thursday, legal representatives for immigrant children are scheduled to return to court, seeking judicial intervention to compel the U.S. government to disburse millions of dollars owed to them for their services this year.
Across the United States, nearly 100 legal aid organizations are providing representation for approximately 20,000 immigrant children as part of a federally funded initiative. Despite this, these organizations report that they haven’t received payments since November. This week, they aim to recover around $65 million currently withheld by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the body responsible for immigrant children under government custody.
Complicating matters, the contract underpinning this initiative expired on July 31 and remains unrenewed.
Roxana Avila-Cimpeanu, deputy director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which advocates for unaccompanied minors in Arizona, noted they are handling approximately 300 pending asylum cases for children. Future client acceptance will necessitate individual assessments.
“As our current cases ramp up, we have to build capacity for that, and that means that more work is needed in order to accept a case,” Avila-Cimpeanu explained in a press call on Wednesday.
Some organizations, however, face a grim reality where the absence of federal funding forces them to decline new clients altogether.
According to a notice in the Federal Register, a $150 million contract has been awarded to Burke Law Group, a Texas-based firm specializing in environmental, litigation, and corporate counsel, to represent unaccompanied immigrant children.
The Associated Press highlighted that Marcella Burkey, a co-founder of Burke Law Group, previously held roles in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior during the Trump administration. Initially, immigration law was not listed on the firm’s website but has since been included for two attorneys.
Michael Lukens, executive director of the Acacia Center for Immigrant Rights, which formerly held the expired HHS contract, expressed concerns that the government is requesting sensitive information about children that is protected by attorney-client privilege.
“If Burke Law is going to do shelter work, and that’s a few thousand kids, there’s still another 22,000 children who are not in shelter, who also are served under this program,” Lukens stated. “I truly believe that whoever signs contracts with HHS is going to agree in their contract to turn over this data.”
The notice, set for official publication on Thursday, outlines that Burke Law Group will offer legal orientation, consultations, and representation services for eligible unaccompanied alien children (UACs) in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) care, along with legal resource referrals upon the children’s release from custody.
Avila-Cimpeanu expressed concerns over logistical challenges, fearing that their clients may be redirected to Texas, complicating ongoing state court cases—a step often necessary before achieving immigration court relief.
“That is something else that we see lacking in this law firm, which doesn’t seem to have particularly strong experience in juvenile immigration law…I don’t see anything that indicates they’re able to represent in state courts across the country,” she remarked. “I just want to be clear — children are going to be sent back to harm, children are going to die, because of this process.”
Requests for comment on the new contract from both Health and Human Services and Burke Law Firm remained unanswered.
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