The Trump administration has taken its most aggressive step yet to reshape legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. quietly creating a new government division to handle their cases. The move, announced in a September 29 Federal Register notice, effectively replaces decades of independent legal aid with lawyers employed by the very administration seeking to deport them.
Kennedy, a lawyer himself, established the "Unaccompanied Alien Children Representation Division" within HHS's general counsel's office. The division will serve as the legal provider for children in deportation proceedings before immigration judges who work for the Department of Justice. This arrangement places the Trump administration on both sides of the courtroom, a conflict that critics say undermines the Fifth Amendment due process rights of vulnerable minors.
Immigration court is civil, not criminal, so the Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not apply. However, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 directs HHS to ensure, "to the greatest extent practicable," that unaccompanied children have access to legal representation. For years, HHS contracted with nonprofit legal service providers like the Acacia Center for Justice to meet that mandate, providing court representation and know-your-rights briefings for roughly 20,000 children who appear in immigration court annually.
Last November, the administration stopped paying many of those nonprofits, particularly those that refused to hand over confidential client information. In their place, Kennedy's new division and a controversial organization called OUR Rescue — founded by a former Trump adviser and promoted heavily by conservative media — have been tapped to represent the children. OUR Rescue, which is not a law firm, received a $158 million sole-source, no-bid contract, as did the Burke Law Group, an energy-focused firm whose principal worked in Trump's first administration.
The Acacia Center for Justice has filed a bid protest, but the administration is moving forward. Legal ethics experts say the dual representation violates professional conduct rules, including prohibitions on concurrent conflicts of interest, unauthorized disclosure of client confidences, and allowing third-party payers to direct a lawyer's professional judgment. Children, particularly pre-verbal toddlers, cannot consent to such arrangements or articulate viable legal claims.
Courtroom reports describe toddlers playing with microphones and crying as judges attempt to conduct removal proceedings. Data shows that children with counsel face deportation rates of just 12 percent, compared to over 80 percent without representation. The administration's push to speed up deportations, as seen in its recent rule slashing refugee appeal deadlines, suggests these new arrangements are designed to expedite removals rather than protect children's interests.
Critics argue that the administration's approach reflects a broader pattern of weaponized enforcement against vulnerable populations. As Nelson Mandela observed, a society's true character is revealed in how it treats its children. By that measure, the Trump administration is failing abjectly.
