Naperville Sun: Durbin, Foster decry legal services funding halt for immigrant children

Thousands of immigrant children who arrived in the U.S. without parents are losing their legal representation, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Bill Foster said Friday.

Speaking at a news conference in Naperville, the two congressmen held the briefing to draw attention to the federal government’s failure to renew a contract under which legal services for children who entered the U.S. without a parent or guardian are paid.

Their comments were made after visiting a shelter in the Chicago area that houses unaccompanied immigrant children. Durbin and Foster, a Naperville Democrat who represents District 11, were joined by immigration activists Laura Smith, executive director of the Children’s Legal Center in Chicago, and Elizabeth Cervantes, co-founder and associate executive director of the Southwest Suburban Immigrant Project in Bolingbrook.

The contract that expired Friday funded a network of nearly 100 legal groups across the country to provide legal assistance for about 20,000 children.

Even with the contract, the Trump administration still owes about $65 million to law groups for work they’ve done, money that’s being withheld for political reasons, Smith said.

The unpaid bills have resulted in some legal aid organizations being unable to pay their attorneys for the past six months, leaving the children they represent to attend immigration court without an attorney, she said. While that has not yet been the case with her organization, they do not have “an unlimited pool of money,” Smith said.

“The government is withholding payment we earned (because it wants) to extract confidential information about the kids, information it has no right to,” she said.

The funding halt comes as the Department of Justice has launched a series of policies resulting in removal orders for abused, abandoned and neglected children who have approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a designation that allows those children to remain in the U.S. and have a pathway to residency, she said.

Immigration judges usually have multiple options for immigrants in removal proceedings, but the Department of Justice has eliminated some of those legal avenues for those with the special status, leaving the judges with no choice but to order those children to be returned to their home countries, she said.

“We have children right here in this district who are ordered removed by the Chicago Immigration Court, despite having approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status,” Smith said. “Watching these children cry, fearful and confused as to why immigration will take them back to dangerous conditions, is heartbreaking and cruel.”

The shelter visited by Durbin and Foster houses detained, unaccompanied children, some of whom have been trafficked, abandoned or neglected, they said. The children in that specific shelter ranged in age from 6 to 17 and attend local schools.

“The first thing that struck me there is that these kids are just like any other kids,” Foster said. “One of the little boys I talked to, his biggest problem is that he had not yet forgiven England for beating Mexico in the World Cup.”

Durbin described the shelter as “an effort to make sure these kids had a fighting chance for a decent life.”

Durbin said the situation will only change when Congressional Republicans change their stance on immigration.

“Republicans in Congress refuse to defy this president. … When it comes to this issue of immigration, very few believe in speaking out. Very few will acknowledge what’s happening, and it’s a shame because I’ve worked with some in the past and I know they realize that this is just playing a role,” Durbin said.

Foster added that the policies supporting these unaccompanied immigrant children have received bipartisan support from Congress for decades. Now, that appears to not be the case, he said.

NBC Chicago: Immigrant children could face court hearings without lawyers, Chicago attorneys warn

New concerns have emerged from immigration attorneys that about 26,000 vulnerable immigrant children across the nation could face deportations -- without lawyers to represent them in court.

On Friday, two Illinois members of Congress, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Bill Foster, toured a shelter that houses about 20 unaccompanied children who fled bad situations in their home countries.

Durbin said his visit with unaccompanied minors is one he'll remember for a long time.

"These kids have been abused. They have been neglected. They've been abandoned. They've been trafficked. And this agency is trying to give them a life," Durbin said.

The children's attorney, Laura Smith, said recent Department of Justice policy changes leave the children at risk of deportation, even though she believes they qualify for a protection created by Congress called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which would give them a pathway to citizenship.

"The children walk into court thinking, 'ICE is going to take me right now,' and they walk in with fear, and they're doing that every 14 to 21 days now because of the policy changes of this administration," said Smith, who is the executive director of the Children’s Legal Center.

Smith believes the risks of the children being removed from the United States are even greater after Friday because that was when the federal contract providing children across the country with legal representation expired.

"The practical implication is children will then go to court without an attorney, 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 10-year-olds," Smith said. "They don't understand the immigration process. Many of the general public don't understand the immigration process because it is extremely complicated, and it's even more complicated for unaccompanied minors."

The contract is between the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Acacia Center for Justice, which has immigration attorneys subcontracting around the country.

That includes the Chicago-based Children's Legal Center, which represents children in Illinois and Indiana. The center said it hasn't received payments from the federal government since December. Smith and other immigration attorneys allege the Trump administration is withholding payments until they turn over what they describe as sensitive information about these children.

In a statement, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, told us it "remains fully compliant with legal and regulatory obligations and does not act in any way that could dissuade a child from seeking appropriate legal relief."

ORR said it offered Acacia the opportunity to extend the contract if Acacia provides data about its clients and bills ORR when it submits applications for immigration relief.

Recently, at least two unaccompanied children in the Chicago area were ordered removed from the country, according to Smith. Those orders are being appealed.

"The child that was ordered removed just two weeks ago (was fully) crying after the immigration court hearing. Complete devastation. And it's horrible that we are doing this to children," Smith said.

NBC 5 also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice for comment but hadn't heard back as of Friday evening.