Judge Orders US to Reinstate Legal Aid for Immigrant Families Separated at Border

A federal judge in Southern California ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to reinstate a contract with a legal aid nonprofit that was helping immigrant families who had been forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The government began funding the program as part of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of the thousands of separated families during the first Trump administration. Those families were reunited in the U.S. and offered legal services to help with applying for permission to live and work in the country.

When federal officials announced in April that they would not renew the contract with Acacia Center for Justice, they said they would instead administer the legal program themselves to “maximize efficiency in the delivery of the program services.”

That didn’t happen, according to District Judge Dana M. Sabraw’s ruling, which said the government violated the settlement agreement by failing to provide the services that Acacia had been offering.

“Although numerous Class members have been referred to [Executive Office for Immigration Review] and some have requested services under the new ‘federalized’ Program … there is no evidence that any of those services have actually been provided,” Sabraw wrote.

Sara Van Hofwegen, managing director for legal access programs at Acacia, said the nonprofit staffers “are really relieved with the court’s ruling that recognized the clear violations of the settlement agreement.”

In a written declaration submitted to the court, one nonprofit that was offering legal services as a subcontractor under Acacia wrote that it had referred over 80 people to the federal program under EOIR, but only one received services in the form of an online orientation.

“It’s very vindicating,” said Danielle Fritz, directing attorney for the San Francisco-based Immigration Center for Women and Children, another subcontractor.

When the government allowed the contract to lapse at the end of April, the immigration center continued offering services without funding. Fritz said her organization was prioritizing cases with imminent deadlines for renewing work authorization or parole to remain in the country, but she warned at the time that the situation was unsustainable.

“We’ve been limiting it to ongoing services with people we’ve already been working with,” Fritz said. “So, hopefully, if things move quickly, we’d be able to reopen to new referrals, really, as soon as we get the new contract.”

Sabraw also ruled that the government must notify the American Civil Liberties Union if federal officials detained any class members, since some have missed important immigration deadlines without legal assistance.

“There were hundreds of class members whose parole expired in May, who we are worried about, who are now in the United States without parole and are even more vulnerable to enforcement actions,” Van Hofwegen said.

As of June 4, the ACLU was aware of three class members or their close family members who had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One had active parole but was mistakenly detained for at least a week “on the verge of removal,” according to Van Hofwegen.

Representatives for ICE and EOIR did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.

Van Hofwegen said there is currently no clear timeline for when the contract will be reinstated, but she hopes to hear from government officials in the coming days. Subcontractors will also need time to rehire laid-off staff and reconnect with former clients.

“During that time, class members continue to be vulnerable,” Van Hofwegen said. “It’s especially an issue because we know that the deadline for many class members to apply for asylum is coming up in December.

Sabraw declined to extend the deadline for asylum applications, which ACLU lawyers had requested.

At a hearing on June 4, lawyers for the ACLU, who first brought the class-action lawsuit in 2018, argued that the government’s plan to cancel the Acacia contract and take over the legal program had several holes.

For starters, it relied largely on referring class members to pro bono attorneys. But the ACLU argued that the government was unlikely to find enough lawyers willing to work for free to meet the needs of thousands of people with unique cases — especially after other recent federal funding cuts to organizations that could offer those services.

“We are extremely pleased with the court’s ruling,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Had the court ruled the other way and allowed the government to eliminate legal assistance, I think there’s no doubt that hundreds, if not thousands, of these families might have been re-separated and re-traumatized.”

Lawyers for the government admitted that as of May 23, no cases had been placed with a pro bono attorney, and Sabraw wrote that “the current landscape strongly suggests Defendants’ placement rate, which is presently zero, is not likely to improve.”

Although government lawyers insisted that they would have been able to run the program, they simultaneously argued in court that they were not obligated to offer every service that Acacia had offered.

For example, they argued that the settlement agreement only required them to help with initial applications for parole and work authorization, but not with applications for re-parole, which is necessary every three years.

“It might not look exactly like what Acacia had run previously and it may not be at lightning speed placing class members, but it is sufficient under the settlement agreement, and there was no requirement that an independent contractor facilitate or run this program,” Department of Justice attorney Daniel Schutrum-Boward said in the June 4 hearing.

Gelernt pushed back in court.

“If people don’t get legal advice and they don’t have the ability to have re-parole and get a chance, a meaningful chance, to get asylum, they’re going to be re-separated from their children,” he said.

Attacks on other immigrant services

Earlier this week, the government chose not to renew another contract for services stemming from the settlement, according to Oakland-based Seneca Family of Agencies.

As part of its contract with the government, Seneca had been offering supportive services including behavioral health, medical referrals, housing placement assistance and efforts to track down separated families.

“Reunification alone does not erase the trauma of separation for families,” a statement on the organization’s website said. “A family’s journey toward healing is an ongoing process that is unique to each parent, child, and family, and services must be individualized and responsive to each family’s situation.”

The government wrote in a court filing that it is searching for a new provider of those services “because it has been determined that Seneca has likely violated anti-discrimination civil rights laws through its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion(DEI) program.”

Government lawyers are now asking the court to temporarily relieve them of their responsibility to provide the aforementioned services while they find a new provider.

The federal government has also moved to cut other immigrant legal services in recent months.

In March, the Trump administration ended a separate contract with Acacia that provided direct legal representation for tens of thousands of children who are in the country without a parent or legal guardian. Several of Acacia’s subcontractors sued in response, and a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the government to continue funding that legal representation through September while the case plays out.

Two other contracts funding programs that offer informational orientations for people facing deportation, or for the legal custodians of people facing deportation, have also been cut.

Fritz, the directing attorney for ICWC, said these cuts mean that detained people will be less likely to win asylum claims or deportation proceedings.