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, according to Smith. But she said 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.

“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 not to be the case, he said.

“The policies that are going into force this week, it is essentially impossible for many and maybe all of them to stay,” Foster said. “That’s not what Congress intended, and it’s not what the American public should tolerate.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.