The Trump administration handed a $150 million contract to represent unaccompanied migrant children to a Houston-based law firm with deep ties to the president and almost no experience in immigration law, bypassing competitive bidding in a move that advocates say threatens children's access to due process.
The Burke Law Group will begin a year-long contract on August 15 to provide legal representation for thousands of children facing deportation proceedings. Only two of the 25 lawyers listed on the firm's website Wednesday morning claimed relevant immigration law experience in their biographies, according to the Associated Press. Many of the others are corporate lawyers with ties to conservative causes and to President Trump.
A Firm Built on Political Connections
The firm's founder, Marcella Burke, served in Trump's first administration as a lawyer in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. The roster includes Justin Shubow, described as the leading supporter of Trump's 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. Ilya Shapiro is listed as a "senior counsel."
The contract notice described Burke's agreement as a "single source cooperative agreement," meaning the administration picked the firm without a competitive bidding process. It didn't offer a justification for bypassing standard bidding rules.
Children Left Without Experienced Advocates
The contract came as the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation campaign and after it let a key contract with a network of legal groups working with immigrant children around the country expire with no replacement. Michael Lukens, who heads the Amica Center, called the sole-source award "upsetting and shocking." He said, "It 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."
Lukens said there are currently about 1,800 children living in shelters and roughly 22,000 living outside with sponsors, such as family members. The government is required under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to facilitate legal representation for children put into deportation proceedings.
Until recently, that work was carried out by nearly 100 legal aid providers across the country that provided know-your-rights trainings to children in shelters and directly represented them in court proceedings. But last Friday marked the last day of that contract, and until late Tuesday it wasn't clear if a new contract would be put in place or who would do the work.
Payment Delays and Data Demands
Legal aid providers have struggled to get repaid for work they have already done since last November, and the administration is asking for detailed information about their clients that they say they're not ethically able to provide. Legal advocates have also seen other trends that worry them, including courts starting in April to call dozens of cases at once in so-called "rocket dockets" and immigrant children having hearings moved up and given less time to prepare.
The AP 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 clients' personal identification numbers and requested that lawyers respond within four hours confirming they would appear to represent their clients in upcoming hearings. It wasn't immediately clear why the administration was making such requests.
Courtroom Chaos
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's cases without prior notice. At a hearing in Chicago Wednesday morning for unaccompanied detained immigrant children, an attorney who didn't represent any of the children appeared via video stream and said she was with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a legal aid group. She said the organization had been contacted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to "appear on behalf" of children without legal representation due to a "gap in legal services," and that it had received the children's private information, including their names and identifying numbers, from the federal government.
The judge said that since all the children already had lawyers, he wasn't going to allow anyone to watch on the video stream, and the outside attorney dropped off. Laura Smith, an attorney representing some of the children, said, "It sounds like this is a person who has my client's information." Alexa Sendukas, the managing attorney at the Galveston Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said one of her organization's attorneys witnessed similar confusion in Houston and that her organization had heard of similar situations in other courtrooms across the country.
Why This Matters:
Thousands of vulnerable children now face deportation proceedings represented by lawyers with little to no immigration law experience, raising serious questions about whether they'll receive the meaningful legal counsel the law requires. The decision to bypass competitive bidding and award a $150 million contract to a politically connected firm undermines the integrity of a system designed to protect children who often fled violence and persecution. With nearly 100 experienced legal aid providers cut out of the process, children are losing access to advocates who understood their cases and could navigate complex immigration proceedings. The rushed transition has created chaos in courtrooms nationwide, with children's private information shared without notice and hearings proceeding without adequate preparation time. When due process protections erode for the most vulnerable, the entire justice system weakens.