Thirty-three unaccompanied migrant children in the Bay Area still have their lawyers. Barely.
Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto is continuing to represent those children even though its federal contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services expired July 31, executive director Katrina Logan told KQED. The nonprofit's team of attorneys and social workers refused to walk away from active cases, Logan said, despite months of withheld payments and an uncertain future.
"Our attorneys have been doing this type of law for many years. They've developed the expertise," Logan told KQED. "So it's definitely tough to be losing this funding."
The organization, located just across Palo Alto's border, is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that blocked HHS last year when the agency tried to terminate funding for lawyers representing more than 20,000 unaccompanied children nationwide, including more than 4,000 in California.
$65 million released after months without pay
HHS stopped paying the network of legal providers in December after the groups refused a new requirement to hand over confidential client information, including children's alien registration numbers and attorneys' case strategies. The Acacia Center for Justice, which holds the master contract on behalf of Community Legal Services and roughly 100 other nonprofits, called the demand a violation of attorney-client privilege.
On Aug. 6, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland ordered HHS to release $65 million in back-due payments to the provider network. The judge rejected the information-sharing requirement as an addition not part of the original contract and said the government was violating her 2025 order to pay for legal services as Congress intended.
That money has been paid. Acacia spokesperson Bilal Askaryar confirmed the $65 million, with interest, was released.
Federal funding redirected to Utah group
The Trump administration awarded a contract worth $158 million, potentially growing to $244 million, to Our Rescue, a Utah-based anti-trafficking nonprofit whose current director, Derek Benner, previously led Homeland Security Investigations under ICE and served as acting deputy director of ICE. Our Rescue's founder, Tim Ballard, has been accused of sexual exploitation by multiple women, according to KQED. Ballard has denied the allegations; a Utah judge dismissed one lawsuit on procedural grounds and prosecutors declined to file criminal charges, but a separate federal lawsuit from other accusers remains active.
The contract was posted Aug. 7. Advocates say Our Rescue lacks experience representing children in immigration court.
A first proposed replacement, a $150 million no-bid award to Burke Law Group in Houston, collapsed by Aug. 12 when the firm said it had "decided not to apply."
Nationally, an estimated 26,000 children were at risk of losing legal representation when the Acacia contract expired. Without a lawyer, unaccompanied children win the right to stay in the United States less than 1% of the time, attorney Alexa Sendukas of the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project told NPR on Aug. 1.
What comes next
Judge Martínez-Olguín noted in her Aug. 6 ruling that "no mechanism presently exists" for the government to comply with its legal obligation to provide children with counsel. She ordered HHS to explain how it would meet the requirements of the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which mandates legal representation for unaccompanied minors through 2027.
The government has engaged the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants on a short-term $20 million contract covering the roughly 1,800 children in federal shelters as of Aug. 17. But for the 33 children represented by Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, and thousands more across the country, the path forward depends on the judge's next order.
