Estrella del Paso warns the legal aid nonprofit could close over unpaid federal funding

EL PASO, TEXAS (KFOX14/CBS4) — Estrella del Paso, a nonprofit legal service for thousands of immigrants, says it may soon be forced to shut down, warning that a funding halt and unpaid federal reimbursements have pushed it into a financial crisis.

Estrella del Paso, a ministry of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, has provided legal services for

According to El Paso Matters, Estrella del Paso said the federal government currently owes the organization more than $765,000 for services already provided, with a lack of reimbursements dating back to December 2025.

Speaking to KFOX14/CBS4 on Tuesday, Melissa Lopez, the executive director of Estrella del Paso, said the center may have to cease operation after the Trump administration stopped funding legal services for some immigrants, particularly unaccompanied children.

“The situation for us right now is pretty critical. We’re owed quite a bit of money from the federal government for services that we have already provided. We are at a really critical point in terms of trying to make sure that we can keep the doors open,” Lopez said.

This comes after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in March 2025 that it was terminating nearly all legal work non-profits provide to unaccompanied migrant children, according to the Associated Press.

However, in April 2025, a preliminary injunction by a California federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s plans to defund legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguín ruled that legal services for unaccompanied children are required under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. The law requires the government to ensure unaccompanied immigrant minors receive counsel in immigration court.

Since then, the Trump administration has argued in court that government payments for legal services are not mandatory.

According to Lopez, the lack of reimbursements could lead the organization to close, with serious consequences for the people it serves.

“Honestly, it probably means deportation, because the fact-of-the-matter is that the services we provide are so critical to the people that we serve, they often don’t have the monetary means to be able to hire an attorney and so without our services, I think we’re going to see the number of deportation cases go up, the number people who get deported go up because they won’t have access,” Lopez said.

To keep legal services active, the center said it is also considering layoffs and program cuts, warning that the legal services are a need.

“We’re talking about the difference between a child being deported and not being deported. We’re talking about the difference between somebody getting perhaps their citizenship and not getting their citizenship,” Lopez said. The number of people that we serve annually in 2025 was just over 40,000 people. And so the need is tremendous. And year after year, we serve tens of thousands of people,” Lopez said.

This comes as the Trump administration continues to seek to end protections for immigrant children, including federal legal aid for minors facing deportation.

Estrella del Paso and 10 other plaintiffs who sued the Trump administration in 2025 filed a motion on July 1 asking Martinez-Olguín to hold HHS in contempt for violating her April 2025 injunction, according to El Paso Matters.

On July 2, Martinez-Olguín set a hearing for July 16 on whether HHS should be held in contempt and gave the agency until July 10 to file a written response to the motion.

The government’s contract with legal service providers for unaccompanied children is set to expire July 31.

Meanwhile, this also comes after the Trump administration reached out to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission for help providing legal services to immigrant children facing deportation.

As first reported by the Texas Tribune, Scott Ehlers, the executive director of the Indigent Defense Commission, said the U.S. Department of Justice is looking for the organization, which oversees nearly three dozen state public defender offices serving more than 80 counties, to provide legal services to immigrant children in their deportation cases.

According to advocates for immigrant children, they worry the request indicates a move toward more unaccompanied children being sent to Texas, where it would be easier to deport them, the Texas Tribune reported.

Lopez told KFOX14/CBS4 that Estrella del Paso sees an average of 2,000 pending cases for unaccompanied children

“In terms of the cases that we actually have pending right now for unaccompanied children, I would say probably in the hundreds, several hundreds, across the board, the entire agency. We probably have, on average, 2,000 to 3,000 cases pending at any given time just because of the sheer number of people that we serve,” Lopez said.

Estrella del Paso is now asking the community for financial support as it continues its legal battle over the federal disputed payments, adding that the organization has created an emergency donation fundraiser to help keep the organization operating.

Tags: