A Houston law firm with ties to the Trump administration and little experience in immigration law has been awarded a $150 million contract to represent migrant children travelling alone to the US.
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The contract was awarded to the small Houston-based Burke Law Group as the Trump administration intensifies its mass deportation campaign across the country. It comes after the administration allowed a key contract with a nationwide network of legal groups assisting immigrant children to expire last week without a replacement. Providers have increasingly warned that children may not receive experienced legal assistance as the administration steps up efforts to remove people from the country.
The Associated Press reported that Michael Lukens, who heads the Amica Center, described the decision to award the sole-source contract to the Texas firm as “upsetting and shocking”. “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.
The contract announced on Tuesday covers only children currently held in government-run shelters, according to the legal aid groups. The government would need to issue another contract to cover services for migrant children living outside the shelter system. Lukens said about 1,800 children were currently living in shelters, while roughly 22,000 were living outside them with sponsors such as family members.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) oversees the government agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children. The department did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump administration announced late on Tuesday that it was hiring Burke Law Group to provide legal services to unaccompanied children.
What is known about Burke Law Group?
The contract will run for one year and starts on August 15. Only two of the 25 lawyers listed on the firm’s website on Wednesday morning claimed relevant experience in immigration law in their biographies. Many of the other lawyers at the firm are corporate lawyers with ties to conservative causes and President Donald Trump.
Marcella Burke, the firm’s founder, served as a lawyer in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior during Trump’s first administration. The firm’s roster also includes Justin Shubow, the leading supporter of Trump’s efforts to require federal buildings to follow classical and traditional architectural styles. Shubow is also a former Trump appointee to the US Commission of Fine Arts.
Prominent conservative legal scholar Ilya Shapiro is listed by the firm as a “senior counsel”. Burke Law Group and its founder did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The contract notice describes the arrangement as a “single source cooperative agreement”.
The designation means the administration selected the firm without a competitive bidding process. The notice did not provide a justification for bypassing standard bidding rules. No competitive process for selecting the firm was described in the notice.
What legal protections apply to migrant children?
Migrant children travelling without an accompanying adult are considered particularly vulnerable because of their age and are usually placed in US government care. Several legal protections apply to them after they enter the country. These include the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which requires the government to facilitate legal representation for children placed in deportation proceedings.
Until recently, that representation was provided by a network of nearly 100 legal aid organizations across the country. The providers conducted know-your-rights training for children in shelters and represented them directly in court proceedings. Last Friday marked the final day of that contract.
Until late Tuesday, it remained unclear whether a replacement contract would be awarded and, if so, which organization would carry out the work. The legal aid providers have also said they have struggled to obtain payment for work completed since last November. They said the administration has requested detailed information about their clients that they are ethically unable to provide.
Legal advocates have reported other developments that have caused concern. Since April, courts have begun calling dozens of cases at once in proceedings described as “rocket dockets”. Immigrant children have also had their hearings moved forward and been given less time to prepare.
Why did lawyers’ emails and court appearances cause confusion?
Other recent developments have raised questions about the administration’s intentions regarding the children’s legal representation and caused confusion. The Associated Press obtained emails sent late on Tuesday by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency responsible for overseeing unaccompanied migrant children. The messages were sent to lawyers representing migrant children in federal custody.
The emails asked the lawyers for their clients’ personal identification numbers. They also asked them to respond within four hours and confirm that they would appear to represent their clients at upcoming hearings. It was not immediately clear why the administration was making such requests of the children’s lawyers.
Separately, attorneys in courtrooms across the country said their hearings were interrupted by lawyers claiming the Trump administration had asked them to take over the children’s cases without giving prior notice. One such incident occurred during a Chicago hearing on Wednesday morning for unaccompanied immigrant children in detention. A lawyer who did not represent any of the children suddenly appeared through a video stream in an exchange witnessed by an Associated Press reporter.
The lawyer said she was with the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a legal aid organization. She said the Office of Refugee Resettlement had contacted the organization to “appear on behalf” of children without legal representation because of a “gap in legal services”. She also said the federal government had provided the organization with the children’s private information, including their names and identification numbers.
The judge said all the children already had lawyers and refused to allow anyone else to watch through the video stream. The outside lawyer then disconnected from the hearing. Laura Smith, an attorney representing some of the children, expressed confusion about the lawyer’s presence, saying: “It sounds like this is a person who has my client’s information.”
The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants referred questions from the Associated Press to HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Alexa Sendukas, managing attorney at the Galveston Houston Immigrant Representation Project, said one of her organization’s lawyers witnessed similar confusion in a Houston courtroom on Wednesday morning. She said the organization had also heard about comparable situations in other courtrooms across the country.
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