Illustration by Jesse Renee Kennedy for Medill/Borderless Magazine This summer, Chicago-based legal representatives for unaccompanied minors confront slashed budgets after the federal government let a contract lapse — a move that comes after months of fast-tracked immigration hearings.
This spring, two sisters sat silently as other young children played and looked through shelves of books and toys behind them. The girls, whose country of origin has not been disclosed to protect their privacy, were appearing virtually before Chicago immigration judge Elizabeth Crites, from the shelter facility housing them.
Ana Elizabeth Souffront, an attorney with the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), was representing the girls in the case that would determine whether they could remain in the United States. Souffront, attending Crites’ court in person, argued that NIJC needed more time to assess relief options since one of the sisters was of “tender age,” meaning younger than 13. As if to emphasize this point, the younger sister periodically turned around to play with toys and see what the other children behind her were doing.
Crites declined to extend the deadline, and scheduled the girls to reappear in courtroom eight on May 11, just eight business days later. That meant Souffrant had to scramble to put together a complicated filing explaining the danger the girls had faced and could still face in their home country, and why they should get to stay in the United States.
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Navigating immigration court can be a difficult and traumatic process, even for adults. The thousands of young immigrants in the United States without parents or guardians – like these girls – depend on dedicated attorneys like Souffrant to represent them. But going forward, such unaccompanied minors will have a harder time finding legal representation since the federal government slashed crucial funding for this work.
On July 31, a contract between the Office of Refugee Resettlement and a network of 100 legal organizations expired, effectively ending funding for NIJC and other Chicago-based legal nonprofits that represent minors in immigration court. Since December, the Trump administration had been refusing to pay such groups $65 million they were owed, as the administration tried to force the lawyers to reveal sensitive information about their child clients.
The contract expiration means the NIJC lawyers – who currently represent hundreds of children – can’t take on any more young clients, and the work they continue doing, such as appearing in court, will be unpaid.
In an email statement, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) said the office “prioritizes the timely completion of all cases and makes scheduling adjustments as needed to ensure cases do not languish. Unnecessary delay hurts both aliens with meritorious claims and the American public who wish to see aliens with non-meritorious claims removed as quickly as possible. As it continues to add new immigration judges, EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner.”
Federal law requires that unaccompanied minors in immigration court have access to legal representation. Now Burke Law Group, a Houston-based law firm, is set to take over all cases nationwide. But the firm only has 26 employees and there are currently upwards of 26,000 unaccompanied minors nationwide.
The switch to the new law firm also comes with a loss of legal expertise. While organizations like NIJC specialize in immigration law and have deep experience representing children’s cases, Burke’s website claims the firm delivers “high-stakes commercial litigation and sophisticated corporate counsel.”
Michael Hoyt, managing attorney of NIJC’s Immigrant Children’s Protection Project, said their representation of immigrant youth was “100% funded by this contract that just got ripped away from us.”
“Unaccompanied children’s work is really important, period,” said Hoyt. “We want to be involved in doing that work” – but without the federal funding, it may be impossible.
Accelerating chaos
The funding cut comes on top of months of turmoil for attorneys representing unaccompanied minors.
Starting in late April, attorneys for these children were informed that their young clients’ cases were being pushed up weeks sooner than previously scheduled, in some cases with only a few days’ notice, as Borderless observed in Chicago’s court. This same trend was seen in juvenile immigration cases nationwide – including New York and Texas – in what advocates saw as a concerted federal effort to hasten the deportation of young immigrants.
“Unaccompanied minors” are immigrant youth under 18 who are in the U.S. without legal status and without parents or guardians. They are held in custody by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, usually at group homes funded in part by the government and run by private organizations. Some of these youth have family members in the U.S. who want to take care of them, but the federal government has tightened the vetting process for relatives or others who apply for custody of detained children – in some cases even detaining the would-be guardians.
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As of June 2026, over 1,700 unaccompanied minors nationwide were in ORR custody, according to data provided by the office, meaning they likely have cases in the “detained juvenile dockets” where such proceedings are heard.
As the cases were fast-tracked this spring and summer, lawyers worked overtime to file applications for asylum and other kinds of relief before their young clients’ expedited court dates. In most cases, the youth are safe in the United States while they wait to hear the decision on their applications, according to NIJC.
But the rush made it difficult to file the best possible pleas for the kids, and also risked retraumatizing them in the process. Meanwhile, the funding cuts mean that in the future, thousands of immigrant youth will go through the increasingly chaotic immigration court system without the help of attorneys who can dedicate substantial time and care to their cases.
“There are so many question marks,” Hoyt said. “It’s uncertainty for children who have just been marked by uncertainty again and again. It’s been a very, very trying time.”
Laura Smith, managing attorney for the Children’s Legal Center, described the fast-tracking of these cases as part of “a series of policy changes targeted at preventing children from receiving adequate time to apply and receive permission to stay in the United States,” and a political move that could continue to shape their futures.
Smith said the fast-tracked juvenile docket feels like a reverberation of past Trump-era federal policies that have targeted unaccompanied minors, in line with the administration’s past actions like quietly loading immigrant children into planes to deport them over Labor Day weekend in early September 2025.
“There’s a pattern and a history of policy changes targeted at expedited removal of unaccompanied minor children,” said Smith, who is among 10 attorneys at the Children’s Legal Center currently balancing about 5,000 open cases, many of which are related to meeting the needs of unaccompanied youth. “And this is just one additional step in their plan.”
Last month, the Texas Tribune reported that the Trump administration may be seeking to move unaccompanied minors from different courts to Texas to make it easier to deport them.
Uncertainty for children, attorneys and judges alike
On May 11, Judge Crites summoned Meghan Scholnick, an attorney with NIJC, to start the day’s detained juvenile docket. Scholnick asked if the court could start with her colleague Allison Gilroy instead, as Gilroy was representing an energetic young boy.
“He’s very wiggly and very young,” Scholnick said with a sheepish smile.
The boy, who looked about five years old, appeared on the video screen behind Crites. He was so short that for most of the hearing, his face was covered by the squares showing other attendees on the Webex video conferencing platform. His dark, curly hair was the only thing peeking through.
In the past, lawyers for unaccompanied minors would typically have months to prepare their cases. But Crites scheduled the child to reappear in court for a crucial next hearing on June 1, less than a month later, denying the lawyer’s plea for more time to assess their options. When asked if June 1 was a newly established hearing date, Crites confirmed that it was.
When Borderless observed over 12 hours of court cases between April and June of this year, Crites was the only judge in Chicago’s immigration court handling cases involving unaccompanied minors. She had been an immigration judge since 2021, but on July 30, the Trump administration fired her in the most recent wave of efforts to overhaul immigration courts across the country.
Shawn Abraham, who was appointed as an immigration judge on May 21, has taken over Crites’s juvenile caseload. Legal representatives and advocates are wary of how this shakeup will impact the children already in court proceedings.
“After so many years, you have a judge who gets a little more used to the appropriate demeanor with children,” said Hillary Richardson, associate director of NIJC’s Children’s Protection Project. “A kind and compassionate demeanor is really important, and we just don’t know what a new judge will be trained on.”
Part of a pattern
Borderless observed the detained juvenile docket in Judge Crites’ courtroom for several months before she was unexpectedly removed from the bench. During that time, she frequently told immigrant youth and their lawyers that they needed to file complicated applications for asylum or other protection within a few weeks, or risk removal from the United States.
If they failed to submit the applications before their next court dates, often scheduled in May and June, Judge Crites warned their pleas to stay in the United States would be considered abandoned.
In other words, their attorneys had to rush to meet deadlines with dire significance for the kids’ futures. And they couldn’t just file any paperwork; given the high standards for asylum, subpar applications make it less likely the children will eventually gain the right to remain in the United States.
If unaccompanied immigrant children are returned to their home countries, they could face the same poverty, inequality or violence they came to the United States to escape. And in some instances, these children don’t have a stable or safe family to return to if they are deported.
“You risk removing children who genuinely will be harmed or killed if they are removed from the United States,” said Smith, with the Children’s Legal Center.
The shortened timeline on the detained juvenile docket also makes it harder for lawyers to take time to build rapport with their young clients, and runs the risk of retraumatizing the youth as they are forced to potentially recount their experiences before they are ready.
In the past, “it would take us three to four appointments to even determine eligibility, because the last thing you want is for a child to sit down with a stranger they’ve never met, saying, ‘Tell us all the really horrible things that happened ever in your life,’” Smith said.
A process that used to take months and multiple visits was often completed in one sitting to meet the time constraints. Without the time to slowly and carefully learn about the trauma and harm a child may have gone through in their home country, putting together an effective asylum application may be impossible – even if the relief is badly needed.
Chicago’s strong network
The lawyers representing youth in Chicago’s immigration court are part of a strong, longstanding grassroots network in the city aimed at protecting and empowering immigrants.
Chicago has codified immigrants’ rights through the Welcoming City Ordinance, while protections for immigrant kids are also enshrined in Chicago Public Schools policy, including through the Chicago Teachers Union contract.
The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights provides detained children with trained child advocates to inform judges what would be in the child’s best interest, while NIJC and the Children’s Legal Center, have long provided free legal representation for children through funding from the now-defunct federal contract.
Advocates say Chicago’s network of legal support for immigrant children is among the strongest in the country. It’s difficult to analyze such trends – including rates of representation by attorneys – in juvenile immigration cases, since government data on these cases is flawed, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a national service on immigration data.
But Chicago’s robust network has long been visible in the courtroom, where almost all unaccompanied youth have for years had attorneys by their side. In El Paso’s immigration court, by contrast, El Paso Matters reported that on a June day of fast-tracked hearings, only six out of more than 30 youth had lawyers.
Tatiana Alonso is a senior staff attorney with the Young Center, which has served thousands of children in immigration proceedings nationwide. Since the Young Center does not actually represent kids in court, it was not impacted by the federal funding cuts. But Alonso and her colleagues have seen the impacts of changing federal policy firsthand.
Soon after the detained juvenile docket was accelerated in Chicago, a child Alonso worked with – who was represented by NIJC – was ordered deported. That was an unprecedented outcome, in Alonso’s experience.
“We are constantly thinking about what has been done in this case, what can we do to avoid another order of removal,” she lamented. “Emotionally, mentally, it’s a lot.”
Alonso and other advocates said that only through a team effort have they been able to navigate rapid federal changes like the accelerated court dates and help unaccompanied immigrant kids have a chance for a future in Chicago. Though immigration court remains volatile, representing children remains of utmost importance for advocates and legal professionals alike.
“We’re going to continue to show up for these kids as long as we reasonably can,” NIJC’s Richardson said. “NIJC will continue to do kids work, but it is going to look different.”
Julian Gonzalez is an investigative journalist and master’s student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. This story was produced as part of a collaboration between Borderless Magazine and the Medill Investigative Lab-Chicago.
