{"id":796180,"date":"2026-07-31T21:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T21:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/796180\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T21:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T21:35:14","slug":"thousands-of-migrant-children-in-the-us-could-face-new-depor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/796180\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of migrant children in the US could face new depor…"},"content":{"rendered":"

HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) \u2014 Advocates warn that tens of thousands of migrant children who came to the United States alone could lose legal representation<\/a> in immigration court and increase their risk of deportation as the Trump administration allows a contract with legal services providers to expire.<\/p>\n

Friday marks the last day of a contract under which the federal government pays for legal services for children who enter the U.S. without a parent or guardian. The government contracts out those services to a network of nearly 100 legal groups across the country that provide<\/a> services to roughly 20,000 children.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it was allowing the contract to expire. But it comes as the administration has redoubled its efforts to achieve its policy of mass deportations, and after migrant children became a target for removal from the country during the first year of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term in office.<\/p>\n

As part of the expiring contract, the legal groups can enter government-funded shelters and give presentations to children about their legal rights, and directly represent the children as they go through immigration court proceedings.<\/p>\n

But as that contract ends, the providers say it\u2019s unclear what will happen come Monday or whether they’ll be able to visit their clients in the shelters where they live.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no understanding of what\u2019s going to happen to those children come next week. We don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to have legal representation. The government as of yet has not identified who will take over this representation,\u201d said Melissa Lopez, the executive director of Estrella El Paso, during a news conference earlier this week. The organization currently represents 243 unaccompanied children in western Texas and New Mexico. <\/p>\n

The providers say their ability to enter the shelters, check on their clients and give presentations to new arrivals serves as an important oversight measure for a vulnerable population. The providers warn that without a lawyer to assist them in court and help them navigate the complexities of immigration law, children will be much more likely<\/a> to be deported back to countries they initially fled. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe government is trying to eliminate our work in this program because they know that without attorneys children will be deported,\u201d said Lopez.<\/p>\n

Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children<\/a> while they are in government care and which administers the contract, did not respond to a request for comment Friday.<\/p>\n

In a Texas immigration court, children play with action figures as lawyer warns of future<\/p>\n

Dozens of children and teens filed early Friday morning into the Harlingen courthouse for a hearing before an immigration judge. In the lobby, other children waiting for their hearings played with puzzles and action figures or drew in coloring books. <\/p>\n

One 8-year-old boy walked into the courtroom holding an Etch-a-Sketch as he sat next to his attorney.<\/p>\n

These were children who had come to the U.S. without a parent or guardian and now their cases were making their way through the immigration courts. But Lauren Fisher Flores, an attorney for the American Bar Association\u2019s ProBar project, which is contracted to provide legal services in southwestern Texas, warned the court of the looming contract expiration.<\/p>\n

She explained that come Monday, lawyers wouldn’t be able to provide the legal information sessions that they usually give to children in shelters that let children know their rights and lawyers also would no longer be able to step in and provide the \u201cFriend of the Court\u201d services where they assist those children who sometimes show up in court without a lawyer. Fisher Flores said the organization didn’t know what the government’s plan was going forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sincerely hope there will be someone to step in next week,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) \u2014 Advocates warn that tens of thousands of migrant children who came to the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-796180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}