{"id":399052,"date":"2026-08-06T06:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T06:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/399052\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T06:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T06:44:15","slug":"trump-administration-awards-150m-migrant-child-contract-to-texas-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/399052\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration awards $150M migrant child contract to Texas firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration has awarded a $150 million contract to give legal representation to migrant children traveling alone to the U.S. to a small Texas law firm with ties to the administration but little experience in immigration law, prompting legal aid groups who\u2019ve long represented<\/a> those children to warn that the move could make them vulnerable to deportation.<\/p>\n

The contract to the Houston-based Burke Law Group comes as the Trump administration ramps up its mass deportation campaign across the country and after the administration last week let a key contract with a network of legal groups<\/a> working with immigrant children around the country expire with no replacement. The providers have increasingly raised worries that children won\u2019t have the experienced legal help they need at a time when the administration is intensifying efforts to remove people from the country.<\/p>\n

Michael Lukens, who heads the Amica Center, called the idea that the administration had given the sole-source contract to the Texas firm \u201cupsetting and shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really does forebode a situation where children are going to get no meaningful due process, no meaningful day in court. We cannot have a random law firm entrusted to take care of children,\u201d Lukens said. <\/p>\n

The groups said the contract announced Tuesday only applies to the children currently held in government-run shelters and that the government would need to issue another contract covering services for migrant children outside the shelter system. Lukens said that there are currently about 1,800 children living in shelters, and roughly 22,000 living outside with sponsors, such as family members. <\/p>\n

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the government agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Contract goes to firm with Trump administration ties<\/p>\n

The Trump administration announced late Tuesday that they were hiring the Houston-based Burke to provide legal services to unaccompanied children. The year-long contract starts August 15.<\/p>\n

Only two of the 25 lawyers listed on the firm\u2019s website on Wednesday morning claim relevant experience in immigration law in their biographies.<\/p>\n

Many of the others at the firm are corporate lawyers with ties to conservative causes and to President Trump. The firm\u2019s founder, Marcella Burke, served in Trump\u2019s first administration as a lawyer in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior.<\/p>\n

Others on its roster include Justin Shubow, the leading supporter of Trump\u2019s efforts to require federal buildings to adhere to classical and traditional architectural styles, and a former Trump appointee to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. Prominent conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro is listed as a \u201csenior counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The firm and the founder didn\u2019t immediately return messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n

The notice says Burke\u2019s contract is a \u201csingle source cooperative agreement,\u201d which means the administration picked the firm without a competitive bidding process. It did not offer a justification for bypassing standard bidding rules.<\/p>\n

Government required to facilitate legal representation<\/p>\n

Migrant children alone are viewed as especially vulnerable because of their age and are usually entrusted to U.S. government care. There are various legal protections that apply to them once they\u2019re in the U.S., including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which requires the government to facilitate legal<\/a> representation for children put into deportation proceedings.<\/p>\n

That representation, until recently, was carried out by a network of nearly 100 legal aid providers<\/a> across the country that provided know-your-rights trainings to children in shelters and directly represented them in court proceedings.<\/p>\n

But last Friday marked the last day of that contract and, until late Tuesday, it wasn\u2019t clear if a new contract would be put in place and, if it was, who would do the work.<\/p>\n

On top of the contract uncertainty, the legal aid providers say they\u2019ve been struggling to get repaid for work they have already done since last November. The groups say the administration is asking for detailed information about their clients that they say they\u2019re not ethically able to provide. <\/p>\n

Legal advocates say they\u2019ve seen other trends that worry them. Since April, the courts started to call dozens of cases at once in so-called \u201crocket dockets\u201d and immigrant<\/a> children have had their hearings moved up and given less time to prepare.<\/p>\n

Emails to providers, multiple lawyers at courts cause confusion<\/p>\n

Other recent occurrences have raised questions about the administration\u2019s intentions regarding the children\u2019s legal representation and caused confusion.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press obtained emails sent by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency responsible for overseeing unaccompanied migrant children, to lawyers representing migrant children in federal custody. The emails, sent late Tuesday, asked for their clients\u2019 personal identification numbers and requested the lawyers respond within four hours confirming they would be appearing to represent their clients in upcoming hearings.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear why the administration was making such requests of the children\u2019s lawyers.<\/p>\n

Separately, attorneys in courtrooms across the country said their hearings were interrupted by lawyers claiming they had been asked by the Trump administration to take over the children\u2019s cases, without having given prior notice.<\/p>\n

At a hearing in Chicago Wednesday morning for unaccompanied detained immigrant children, an attorney who did not represent any of the children suddenly appeared via video stream, in an exchange witnessed by an Associated Press reporter.<\/p>\n

The attorney said she was with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a legal aid group, and that the organization had been contacted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to \u201cappear on behalf\u201d of children without legal representation due to a \u201cgap in legal services.\u201d She said her organization had received the children\u2019s private information, including their names and identifying numbers, from the federal government.<\/p>\n

The judge said that since all the children already had lawyers, he wasn\u2019t going to allow anyone to watch on the video stream, and the outside attorney dropped off.<\/p>\n

Laura Smith, an attorney representing some of the children, expressed confusion about why the person was there: \u201cIt sounds like this is a person who has my client\u2019s information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants referred questions from The Associated Press to HHS\u2019s Office of Refugee Resettlement.<\/p>\n

Alexa Sendukas, the managing attorney at the Galveston Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said one of her organization\u2019s attorneys witnessed a similar confusion play out in court Wednesday morning in Houston and that her organization had heard of similar situations in other courtrooms across the country.<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

Santana reported from Sacramento, Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas, and Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration has awarded a $150 million contract to give legal representation to migrant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[140063,5578,145,490,56,140060,1724,140062,140064,140061,287,27,29,28,140059,1760,1499,464,17269,7533],"class_list":["post-399052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-alexa-sendukas","tag-domestic-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-houston","tag-ilya-shapiro","tag-immigration","tag-justin-shubow","tag-laura-smith","tag-marcella-burke","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-trump-hub","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}